The Whited Sepulcher "Speaks"

Local PA stuff...

If it's Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday, then that means it's time for J.D. Mullane to spew more garbage in the Bucks County Courier Times. And it doesn't take much to guess what his target is today. I'd really wished the paper had assigned the story of Msgr. Shoemaker's meeting with the parish last Wednesday to Kate Fratti, the paper's other metro columnist, since she takes more care in practicing her craft and shows more humanity in her writing. But no...

(I would just retype Mullane's column and rebut it point by point since I can't link to it from the awful web site of the Bucks County Courier Times, which I have done in the past, but I don't have time to do that, and I apologize.)

The charges against Msgr. Shoemaker and Msgr. Statkus as "enablers" of predatory priests are horrific and well known at this point. Could they have done more to prevent abuse by these animals? With 20-20 hindsight, the answer of course is yes, but they deserve to be heard in this also.

Mullane doesn't tell us in his column whether or not he attended the meeting the other night (something I was unable to do because his paper trumpeted the meeting all over the place and turned it into a media freak show, and by the time I got there, I was unable to park my car on the small grounds of our parish and school), but if he had, he would have heard Shoemaker fielding all questions from those in attendance and enduring all rants and tirades (which is his job in this situation, I admit). He also would have heard Shoemaker tell those in attendance (and we heard this from a neighbor who was there) that he and the rest of the archdiocese decided to rely on the advice of psychologists in the 70s and 80s when it came to dealing with these animals who prey upon kids, and they told the archdiocese to integrate them into the general population because they thought that was the best chance for reforming them. However, by the 90s, it became apparent that that wasn't working.

Is that a thin excuse? Probably, but Shoemaker and Statkus, among others, were struggling with what to do about this. Does it absolve them for the violence upon these kids? No, but suppose you were a priest and you were told that you would be defrocked if you spoke out about this. Yes, I know this is the Eichmann "only following orders" defense again, but this is the crap we struggle with here in the real world, as opposed to Mullane's imaginary ivory tower of virtue.

(Actually, regarding the issue of his attendance at the meeting, Mullane plays a clever trick in the column. He says something along the lines of "the biggest applause of the evening came when someone said to Shoemaker that he should resign." That implies that Mullane was there, but he could have heard that from elsewhere or even made it up. He could have stated more clearly that he was there, but he doesn't.)

Something which makes me laugh, actually, towards the end of Mullane's column today, is where he tells us that he's a Catholic also and decides to give us a lecture in the faith. Mullane, based on his venomous words and invincible ignorance that he demonstrates on an almost continual basis, shows no acquaintance whatsoever with the faith that I have been taught and encouraged to practice throughout my life.

Mullane, stay out of our parish and leave us alone. I would have thought that you would have learned to find a clue about what you write about after your truly insipid columns regarding the Pennsbury teachers strike, but I now know that I was delusional myself to think that that would have ever occurred to you.

(Oh, and by the way, this is one of "J.D. Mullane's Greatest Hits.")