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November 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The National “Catholic” Reporter (NCR), a publication created in the 1960s for the apparent purpose of undermining Catholic doctrine in favor of a leftist ideological agenda, has spent decades trying to convince Catholics to toss out the Church’s perennial doctrines on sexual morality, particularly the immorality of homosexual sodomy. The publication, which is highly influential among dissident Catholic clergy and theologians, regularly defends homosexual relationships and the presence of homosexuals in the priesthood, even as the crisis of clerical sex abuse of male adolescents has exploded worldwide.

The publication has always sought to capitalize on the crisis it helped to create by claiming that it offers proof in favor of its dissident positions, what faithful Catholics see as an agenda of undermining and destroying the hierarchical nature of the Church and its sacramental clergy. Simultaneously, NCR vehemently denies any relationship between “homosexual orientation” – that is, a proclivity for sodomy with people of the same sex – and the rape and molestation of teenage boys and vulnerable seminarians who are under the power of “gay” superiors. 

NCR repeated its ideological mantra in last week’s edition of the newspaper, this time lashing out at its traditional neoconservative enemies and remaining oddly silent about LifeSite, Church Militant, and the Lepanto Institute, which seem to have been the predominant targets of its journalistic wrath in recent years. 

After lambasting George Weigel, Mary Ann Glendon, Bill Donahue, and the late Richard John Neuhaus for their historically uncritical support for Pope John Paul II, the disgraced sex abuser Fr. Marcial Maciel, and the Catholic hierarchy in general, the editors of NCR write: “None of them any longer has a persuasive case to make. Some of them now try to blame the crisis on gay priests. You might be tempted to latch onto that diversion, but it will only prolong the already intolerably long agony.”

NCR readily (and happily) admits that “gay priests and bishops are certainly among us — probably a greater percentage of gays in the Catholic clergy, if anecdotal evidence and the private chatter of seminary rectors and heads of orders is to be believed, than one would find in the general population,” and urges them to come out of the closet, asserting that “many bishops and too many priests” need to “admit to an orientation that the church still calls ‘disordered.’” However, the editors add, “sexual orientation is not one of the topics that match with sexual abuse.”

“Orientation is not a determining factor in abuse of children,” the NCR editors write. “If it were, we'd have to be investigating heterosexual orientation as a cause because a lot of abuse is perpetrated by heterosexual men upon boys and girls. So, take that path if you'd like, but be prepared to lose whatever bit of credibility might be left in the tank.”

Overwhelming evidence correlates homosexual orientation with clerical sex abuse

It’s hard to imagine orthodox Catholics lying awake at night worrying that they might lose credibility with the leftist radicals who run NCR. However, it is worth recalling that, in fact, an abundance of evidence does indicate that admission into seminaries of those with a homosexual “orientation” over the last fifty years is a major reason for the sexual abuse crisis.

The most cursory review of the statistics regarding child sex abuse by Catholic clergy in the United States reveals that the vast majority of victims were not pre-pubescent children, and therefore were not cases of pedophilia in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, they were mostly cases of the homosexual abuse of post-pubescent adolescent males, which would make them cases of pederasty or “ephebophilia,” which wouldn’t suggest an attraction to children as such. Arguments that claim that homosexuals are no more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexuals (a suspect claim in itself, which is contradicted by much evidence) are beside the point; most cases were simply those of homosexual grooming and victimization of adolescent boys. 

Despite the overwhelming evidence in favor of this correlation, which doesn’t exactly require rocket science to understand, the gay lobbyists at NCR have difficulty comprehending it. 

Here’s a brief and incomplete summary:

  • A new study by a former Catholic University of America sociology professor has concluded that the increase in homosexual men in the priesthood correlated with the increase in sex abuse crimes over a fifty year period (1951-2000).
  • The recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report concluded that 79% of sex abuse victims in the Catholic dioceses of that state were adolescent boys.
  • The 2016 annual report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) indicates that 78 percent of sex abuse victims in the previous year were male, and only 15 percent were under the age of ten. 
  • The 2013 annual report of the USCCB indicates that at least 68% of victims reported to dioceses were ages 10-17, and 80% of all sex abuse victims were male.
  • A recent statistical breakdown from Chilean prosecutors indicates that, out of the hundreds of sex abuse accusations regarding Catholic clerics and those in religious life, 73 percent of victims were males and 72 percent of victims were between the ages of 11 and 25. 

The obvious correlation between homosexuals in the priesthood and pederastic sex abuse was openly admitted by the Holy See during the papacy of Pope Benedict.  Archbishop Silvano Tomasi , the Vatican’s representative to the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, stated publicly in 2009 that the sex abuse crisis was largely the product of homosexual ephebophilia, countering those who wished to exclude homosexuality from the equation by attributing the behavior to pre-pubescent “pedophilia.”

“Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90 per cent belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17,” said Tomasi.

Even Pope Francis, who is deeply entangled in compromising alliances with the clerical “gay mafia” and tends to defend homosexuals and deflect accusations from them (particularly if they are his political protégés), has recognized the problem of homosexuals in the seminary. That’s why he has publicly lamented the admission of homosexuals into seminaries and has publicly warned bishops not to do so. 

Also, under Pope Francis’ leadership, the Holy See’s Congregation for the Clergy in 2016 expressly reaffirmed the Church’s prohibition on admitting seminarians who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, writing: “The Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’ Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”

That may be why Pope Francis scheduled the upcoming summit on clerical sex abuse to begin on the feast of St. Peter Damian (Novus Ordo calendar), February 21. Damian is famous for his “Book of Gomorrah,” urging Pope St. Leo IX to rigorously punish clerics guilty of sodomy and to expel the worst ones from the priesthood permanently.  Sadly, Francis seems little eager to implement his own advice and to crack down on homosexuality in the priesthood, preferring to attribute the current crisis to “clericalism” and to delay the implementation of any measures to hold bishops accountable in the American Church. 

NCR’s solution to the crisis: follow the advice of … Cardinal Blase Cupich!

So what is the solution offered by the editors of NCR? Their laughable attempt to evade the obvious cause of the crisis by claiming that homosexuality has nothing to do with the sex abuse of countless adolescent boys is followed by even more ridiculous advice: that we should follow the lead of Cardinal Blase Cupich, who is credibly accused by Archbishop Carlo Viganò of being a protégé of sex abuser Cardinal James McCarrick, and two other bishops involved in sex abuse cover ups: the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Weurl, and Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga, who has lambasted seminarians for complaining about the homosexual predation rampant in his Tegucigalpa seminary. 

Apparently to prove his gay mafia bona fides, Cupich recently ran a priest out of his parish for daring to burn a blasphemous homosexualist rainbow flag with a cross superimposed on it, one previously used by the pastor of the same parish, a homosexual who was found dead in his mirror-lined apartment hooked up to a “sex machine.” Cupich wished to place the priest, Fr. Paul Kalchik – who is himself a victim of sex abuse by a homosexual priest – in a mental institution, as if he were to be understood as psychologically disturbed for rejecting the homosexual ideology. Fr. Kalchik escaped Cupich’s agents and is now in hiding.

Cardinal Cupich generated outrage several months ago when he called the sex abuse crisis a “rabbit hole” to avoid in favor of addressing other issues, such as the environment and migrants. He eventually apologized for his words.

However, the editors of NCR, who appear to be ever loyal to the clerical gay mafia and its agenda, assure the bishops that Cardinal Cupich has the answer to the sex abuse crisis. Addressing the bishops, NCR's editors write: “One of your brothers, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, has already laid out some appropriate steps. Bishops must ‘cede authority,’ he said, to allow for greater accountability to outside authority. He also said that ‘privilege, power and protection of a clerical culture’ have to be ‘eradicated from the life of the church’ or ‘everything else is a sideshow.’”

They also suggest that the bishops “attend in mufti and leave all the trappings, the collars and black suits, all the silk and lace and pectoral crosses at home. God will recognize you. Take that little step in humility and actually meet as brothers. Seek out those among you who have suffered, who have known what it means to come through pain or addiction or illness. Ask them to help lead you out of this dark moment. They would know the way.”

The editors of the National “Catholic” Reporter, as confused about Catholic moral teaching as they are, are not entirely wrong to attribute the sex abuse crisis to what Pope Francis has called “clericalism.” It is certainly true that an excessive respect for the clergy and sometimes an irrational belief in the personal moral impeccability of priests has contributed to the problem. Some clergymen certainly see their elite status as a license to commit acts that would otherwise be condemned, and the bishops who cover up for them often isolate themselves from the faithful, ruling them and their clergy in an arbitrary and dictatorial manner, hidden behind a wall of bureaucracy and privilege. 

So NCR is not entirely wrong on this point, even while it uses it to distract readers from the main problem, which is the “disordered” — in the wording of the Catechism — homosexual “orientation” of so many members of the clergy. Neither are they wrong to denounce the obsequious defense of Church authorities by certain neoconservatives who have often acted as unqualified apologists for the corrupt ecclesiastical establishment.

However, NCR isn’t seeking to remedy such problems nor to set the Church on the track of true reform; it appears to be only attempting to exploit the suffering of sex abuse victims to advance its agenda of subverting legitimate ecclesiastical authority – and therefore the Church itself. The editors should be ashamed of themselves, but they have long seemed incapable of shame in their apparent quest to morally and spiritually ruin the Catholic Church in America. 

The fundamental problem faced by the Catholic Church in this crisis is not the existence of the clerical hierarchy, which is in fact an element of the Church’s divine constitution given to it by Christ. The problem is, rather, the failure of the hierarchy to exercise its authority in a spirit of humility and service, and to carry out its duty to defend the perennial truths of the faith against the moral and doctrinal subversion of organizations like NCR and their allies in the clergy, who are nothing less than a “fifth column” in the Church. 

In reality, the lack of any ecclesiastical sanction against this spiritually bankrupt publication is itself a symptom of the failure of Church authority to protect the faithful from the influence of heresy and dissent, a species of the same moral failure that caused the sex abuse crisis in the first place. When the authority of the clergy is once again restored and used for its divinely-ordained purpose, both the sex abuse crisis and organizations that facilitated it – such as the National “Catholic” Reporter – will finally come to an end.

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Matthew Cullinan Hoffman is an essayist, journalist, and author whose articles have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, both secular and Catholic, including the Wall Street Journal, London Sunday Times, Detroit News, New York Daily News, LifeSiteNews, Catholic World Report, Crisis Magazine, and the National Catholic Register. He is the translator and author of The Book of Gomorrah and St. Peter Damian's Struggle Against Ecclesiastical Corruption (2015). He holds an M.A. in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary, where he is certified for academic competency in five foreign languages. He currently resides in Mexico, and does specialized coverage of Latin America for LifeSite and other publications.

He can be contacted at [email protected].