The Rotten Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Miter
"Shocked, SHOCKED!"

As if another scandal couldn't rock The Church here in America, along comes the latest and greatest out of Cleveland.

Here's a taste;

Former Cleveland bishop "shocked" by aide's fraud

Cleveland, Aug. 31, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Bishop Anthony Pilla, the former leader of the Cleveland, Ohio diocese, said that he was stunned to learn that a trusted aide had engaged in a scheme to draw secret payments from the diocese. Bishop Pilla testified in the trial of Joseph Smith, a former chief financial officer for the Cleveland diocese, who is charged with receiving up to $750,000 in payments for his part in a scheme to defraud the diocese.

Smith resigned from his post with the Cleveland diocese in 2004, shortly after the finance council began to raise questions about diocesan accounts, and the bishop suspended him from his post. Bishop Pilla himself resigned in April 2006.

Lawyers for Smith and Zgoznik have claimed that diocesan leaders, including Bishop Pilla, were aware of many secret accounts established and under-the-table payments made with diocesan funds. But at Smith's trial this week, the defense was barred from questioning Pilla about any subject other than his dealings with Smith and Zgoznik on issues relating to the criminal charges.

"Shocked. Shocked," Bishop Pilla replied, when asked to describe his response to the report that Smith had steered lucrative consulting contracts toward Anton Zgoznik, another former diocesan employee. Smith allegedly received kickbacks from Zgoznik in a plot that drew millions of dollars from diocesan accounts, according to prosecutors. Zgoznik will face charges in a separate trial.

There's also an additional article from June, 2007 from BishopAccountability.Org that has links to all the documents already available in the case United States of America v. Joseph H. Smith and Anton Zgoznik, as well as documents from a precursor civil suit, Rosie Andujar et al. v. Bishop Anthony Pilla et al. They also offer links to background articles and reporting.

They also state the following;

U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aldrich ordered the Diocese of Cleveland to turn over financial records to Joseph Smith and Anton Zgoznik, two former diocesan employees accused of stealing $784,000 from the church.

Smith and Zgoznik maintain the money they are accused of stealing was actually additional pay authorized by former Bishop Pilla and the Rev. John Wright, the church's former financial and legal secretary. Smith and Zgoznik claim the diocese had hundreds of off-the-book accounts that church leaders used to make secret payments to scores of people.

Now it's time to dig a little deeper. Let's take a look at some of the history concerning Bishop Pilla. From The Dallas Morning News (2002) expose on the cover-up by nearly 2/3's of America's Bishops;

He [Bishop Pilla] and his aides have long been accused of covering up for abusive priests. They kept Rev. Gary Berthiaume in a parish for most of the 1980s, for example, without telling the congregation about his prior molestation conviction in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

A priest assigned to monitor him, the Rev. Allen Bruening, himself previously had been removed from a parish because of abuse allegations and made director of a Catholic high school. Father Bruening was accused of misconduct again in the mid-1980s and ended up in Texas, where he became one of the Amarillo diocese's top administrators before being removed from ministry about 10 years ago.

Father Berthiaume was also transferred again, to the Diocese of Joliet, Ill., where he recently lost his job as a hospital chaplain. Last year, he and Father Bruening were accused in a lawsuit of repeatedly ganging up on one boy in a shower in the 1980s in Cleveland. One of Bishop Pilla's longtime top aides, Auxiliary Bishop A. James Quinn, advised a group of church lawyers in a speech 12 years ago to remove some documents from priests' personnel files. "If there's something you really don't want people to see, you might send it off to the apostolic delegate [the Vatican embassy in Washington], because they have immunity," said Bishop Quinn, who is also a lawyer.

Some plaintiffs' attorneys have since named him in lawsuits that accuse top Catholic leaders of racketeering. Bishop Quinn has said his speech was not about sexual abuse or any other crime. He serves on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' abuse committee and, like all auxiliary bishops, is a voting member of the conference. In late May, Bishop Pilla announced that any priests who abuse children in the future will be permanently barred from ministry in his diocese. But it wasn't clear what would happen to several clerics who have been suspended because of past allegations. (I've been searching the 'net, without any luck, for info if Bishop Pilla ever did "make it clear" what would happen to the several priests who have already been suspended. If anyone knows, please post a comment.)

But I believe if we really want to know what kind of Diocese Bishop Pilla ran, read the following from Tradition In Action;

In the Cleveland Diocese, Ursuline nuns are teaching the following occult and pagan superstitions to Catholics: Jewish Kabbalah, Tai Chi meditation, Yoga, Shamanism, Chakras, Feng Shui and Reiki. Further they are promoting the Gnostic book The Da Vinci Code. This is one of four New Age “Health and Wellness” centers which the Bishop Pilla promotes. In the April/May 2004 bulletin these centers hosted “Healing Yourself Through Mandalas” (1). The official Diocese of Cleveland website has a page for its ambiguous "Gay and Lesbian Ministry." (2)
1. For the Ursuline nuns, check at http://ursulinesophiacenter.com/cgi-bin/scsearch.pl (This site has been shut-down.) Here is a link from the National Catholic Reporter concerning the activities of the Ursuline Sisters in Diocese of Cleveland during the Episcopacy of Bishop Pilla - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_26_38/ai_86047282; for the St. Joseph sisters see http://www.riversedgecleveland.com/wellness/index.aspx as well as http://www.sistersofstjoseph.com/ . By the way, the Sisters of St. Joseph also link to FutureChurch.org

2. http://www.dioceseofcleveland.org/gayandlesbianfamilyministry/mission/index.htm

For years Bishop Pilla also permitted the group Future Church to meet on Church property. This dissident organization promotes women priests, married priests, and homosexuality as part of its agenda. Only recently did the Bishop reverse his policy and disallow them from meeting on Church property. However, Future Church is still stationed at St. Mark’s in Cleveland.

Pilla on giving Communion to pro-abortion politicians

On the topic of giving Communion to pro-abortion politicians, journalist Colette Jenkins, who was present at a meeting with the Bishop and 35 politicians, reported these words of Bishop Anthony M. Pilla:

“The altar is a place of unity, healing, nourishment and grace. It is not a place for confrontation ... In my view, the battles for human life and dignity and for the weak and vulnerable should be fought not at the Communion rail, but in the public square, in hearts and minds, in our pulpits and public advocacy, in our consciences and communities.'' (Colette Jenkins, "Politics, sacrament don't mix, Bishop says," in the Akron Beacon Journal, July 2004).

This vague language means that the Bishop would give Communion to so-called Catholic lawmakers such as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, who for years have been writing and promoting pro-abortion laws while voting against pro-life laws that would save unborn babies.
In the same meeting, Pilla continued:
“The view of refusing Communion to politicians who support keeping abortion legal is not part of the pastoral tradition of the Church …. Given the long standing practice of not making a public judgment about the state of the soul of those who present themselves for Communion, the pastoral tradition of the church places the responsibility of such a judgment first on those presenting themselves for Holy Communion” (ibid).

What was it again that Bishop Pilla said about the accusations against his former CFO? "Shocked, shocked"? That sounds an awful lot like what Claude Raines' character, Captain Renault, said in the film Casablanca. His quote appears to be about as sincere as the good bishop's is.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here! (Helmet tip to Phineas)

Yes, Bishop Pilla... we're all shocked.

To paraphrase the French inspector played by Claude Rains in the 1942 movie Casablanca, “I’m shocked, shocked I say, to find that a Catholic bishop knowingly moved homosexual priests from parish to parish!”

This testimony under oath from disgraced former Archbishop Rembert Weakland is just the tip of the iceberg. If any of you recall, Archbishop Weakland was forced to resign his position a few years back when it became public knowledge that he had used over $450,000 of archdiocese money to pay off his boyfriend (yes, I did say “boyfriend”). However, he left after he had completely destroyed the once beautiful Cathedral, stripping it of any pretense of Catholicism. He effectively gutted and Protestantized the Cathedral, especially by building a Protestant “table” well into the nave of the church, destroying the high altar and communion rail. He even had a bust of himself placed in the “new” Cathedral. The faithful protested to Rome to stop that madness, but it was too late.

I’m sure you’ll all agree with me that this situation of moving homosexual priests from one parish to the next, without any notification, was probaly a once in a lifetime occurrence, and only in Weakland’s archdiocese?.....Right!!!

(Interesting side note: Back in 1997, as a new Roman Catholic, I unfortunately subscribed to the ultra-liberal Jesuit magazine, “America.” Little did I know back then how far removed these once great men had become from the Faith. In one issue, the then leader of the liberal arm of Catholicism in America, none other then the good Archbishop himself (along with the wonderful Cardinal Mahony), wrote a long piece on how Pope John Paul II had betrayed the Second Vatican Council by allowing the Old Mass to be celebrated through the Indults of 1984 and 1988. My point is that much of the abuse found amongest our bishops have been from those most liberal in thought, and against any return to tradition. Interesting, no? “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.” The Church prays as the Church believes. Or more accurately, how we pray is ultimately how we believe.)

Let us hope (and pray) that men like Archbishop Weakland never rise to the Episcopacy again!

Weakland moved priests, testimony shows

By TOM ROBERTS
Published:
December 5, 2008
In what amounts to a rare inside look at how a church leader dealt with priests who molested children, retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland has testified that he moved such priests from one parish to another without alerting parishioners or notifying police.

In a deposition conducted June 5-6, the former head of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, said he did so “because no parish would have accepted a priest unless you could say that he has gone through the kind of psychological examination and that he’s not a risk to the parish.”

Asked if he had ever made “any report of suspected sexual abuse between ’77 and 2002 to civil authorities,” he answered, “I can’t recall ever doing so personally.”

The deposition was taken in answer to an objection of the archdiocese to a pending trial of a suit brought by seven people who allege they were abused as children decades ago. The church contends that the trial, scheduled for early next summer, would be unfair because most of the principal figures accused of abuse are dead.

In other testimony, according to a report in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Wealkland, who resigned in 2001 after admitting he had made a $450,000 payment to an adult male who had accused him of sex abuse, also acknowledged that some incriminating mental records had been destroyed and that bishops spoke in code in correspondence discussing abusers who had been moved outside their dioceses.

Atty. Jeffrey Anderson of St. Paul, Minn., who filed the suit, released edited portions of the video recorded testimony in November. Those portions as well as the entire 320-page transcript of the two days of testimony can be found at BishopAccountability.com.

Anderson contends that the trial would be fair because Weakland’s testimony shows a cover up existed.

No matter how the courts rule on that issue, the case has provided an unusually frank look at how a major prelate handled the crisis in his archdiocese. “It is still very rare that bishops face questions under oath and the answers are made public,” said David Clohessy, national director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) . “Every instance in which a deposition is exposed is important.”

Clohessy said he found especially disturbing Weakland’s acknowledgement that he had not contacted police about any of the accused abusers among his priests and the archbishop’s claim that the justice system itself had a hand in perpetuating the problem. Weakland recounted that one judge issued just probation for an accused priest and a district attorney said he would not prosecute if a priest was removed from his county. The archbishop also recalled that he had difficulty persuading officials in Rome to remove priests who had been accused.

“I think that’s just ludicrous,” said Clohessy. “He’s an archbishop with stunning powers and few limits.” Despite the justice system’s limits, he said, Weakland “had the power that all virtually all bishops possess and that virtually no bishops use – they can stand up in the pulpit of any church” and tell the congregation that accusations have been made against a priest and encourage anyone with information to come forward.

Clohessy and others also were highly critical of both Weakland and his successor, Archbishop Timothy Dolan after Weakland testified that the two had never discussed any of the cases when Dolan took over in August 2002.“It’s just painful to think of any bishop taking over a diocese and not even casually asking his predecessor, ‘Anything about sex abuse I should know? Any predator not publicly acknowledged yet? Any priest I should know about?”

Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for the archdiocese, said even before Dolan’s arrival, the archdiocese had compiled a list of all those who had been accused, credibly or otherwise. When the crisis began to break anew after revelations in Boston in January 2002, he said the Milwaukee Archdiocese “quickly acknowledged that we had six men in active ministry that we had already removed” from ministry. He said the diocese already had convened an independent commission headed by the dean of the Marquette UniversityLaw School.

All of the information compiled was available for Dolan from his first day on the job, said Topczewski. He said Dolan also initiated his own investigation of any priests who had any hint of allegations against them and consulted the vicar for clergy, who was most responsible for dealing with charges against priests.

The stakes in the cases are high for the archdiocese. In a ruling last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said victims could sue the church on fraud charges if they were able to show the church knew about the abuse and deliberately covered it up. Subsequently, a county judge who will hear the case ruled that the church’s insurance carrier could not be held liable. So the church would have to pay any financial rewards that might result from the litigation. The Journal-Sentinel reported that the archdiocese’s chief financial officer, John Marek, said such a decision could result in bankruptcy for the church.

In May 2002, Weakland acknowledged making a settlement of $450,000 after being accused of sexually assaulting a man in 1982. The accuser, Paul Marcoux, said Weakland made sexual advances toward him after a dinner and evening of heavy drinking when Marcoux was in his early 30s and a graduate student at Marquette. Weakland, in acknowledging the settlement, said, “I have never abused anyone.”

Weakland had just turned 75 when the story broke. He was replaced by Dolan in a matter of months.

Tom Roberts is NCR editor at large and can be reached at troberts@ncronline.org.