I received the following two e-mail’s from a non-priest friend who is a faithful Catholic.  Blessedly he understands the theology of the Church and is well grounded in the reality of living one’s faith.

  “Here you go.  Since 2002 Fr. Tom Owens has served on the board of  “child welfare”.  He is the one that told you to keep your mouth shut when you were propositioned by that priest Fr. Bruger.  Didn’t you point this out to Cardinal Rigali when you met with him?  He obviously couldn’t have cared less and do you think the new Archbishop is going to be any different?  Archbishop Chaput called Cardinal Rigali the “greatest churchmen he has ever meet”.  If I were in your shoes I would have a meeting with the Philadelphia DA because the Archdiocese still doesn’t get it.  I mean Rigali is the same bishop, who after the 1st of 2 grand jury reports, promoted Msgr. Lynn (who was responsible for hiding most of these pedophile priests) to be pastor of a wealthy parish instead of at the very least putting him in Downingtown and forbid him to function publicly. They STILL DON’T GET IT.  Have you heard that the Papal spokesman expressed SURPRISE at the tone of the Irish Government towards the Holy See and recalled the ambassador. The entire country is ready to burn every Irish Bishop at the stake for what they did and the Vatican still expresses surprise that people have such intense feelings towards them.  Are they all medicated or something?  HOW after everything that has happened can they still not get it?  That’s not normal.  My arteries are ready to explode.” 

When I met with Justin Cardinal Rigali I did indeed tell him about being told that this was a good opportunity to keep my mouth shut when I told Fr. Owens about Fr. Brugar’s baggage.  But it seems the archdiocese was not interested in acctually healing/mending this rift in the Church so once again chose to do nothing.

second e-mail

“Isn’t this nice.  The Archdiocese was informed that the Chief Financial officer at the chancery was stealing money from the archdiocese and ONE DAY LATER this person was escorted out the door.  The archdiocese didn’t wait to have a trial to make sure justice was done but they had her escorted out of the building immediately.  All of this was done based on a preliminary investigation.  But complaint after complaint was made against numerous priests (and they didn’t even bother in many cases to investigate the accusations) and they did nothing.  But let a lay person take one thin dime the archdiocese will prosecute to the full extent of the law, as they should.  But when they defend child molesters it’s completley understandable why people are furious.  One wonders if it was a priest who did this how would they have responded?”

I think that sums it up perfectly.