Sexual abuse victims’ advocate, Investigative Reporter: "When one person wrote & asked why more priests do not speak out and address moral & doctrinal problems plaguing the Catholic Church, someone responded, 'They are afraid of being murdered'"
THE CHURCH’S GRAVE PROGNOSIS
‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’
I am often asked, “How do we: 1) Save a Church that is bleeding membership; 2) Restore unity; and 3) Correct the problem of a disparity between orthodox teachings and heterodox pastoral practices promoted by a synodal church? My response is similar to what Swiss Msgr. Martin Grichting wrote in “Crisis of Confidence in the Church,” where he points out that all power and authority in the Catholic Church reside in the Pope, who alone possesses “absolute power.”
Grichting concludes that the “wounds of ecclesial unity” reflected in the doctrinal and moral mess the Church is in today, not to mention the worldwide clerical sex abuse crisis that the Pope and Bishops continue to cover up, can only be resolved by the Pope who “holds the key to healing the disease” that continues “to fester and divide and weaken the body of Christ, the Church.” Given the Pope’s “absolute power,” I agree with Grichting’s conclusion, but I doubt that Pope Leo can or will heal an increasingly weakened and disease-ridden church.
Homosexuality and Adultery
In order to understand my skepticism, I invite you to go back in time to 1992, when I was asked to testify before Congress on the Department of Defense (DOD) homosexual exclusion policy. After my testimony in support of the policy, Lawrence Korb, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense who opposed the policy, was asked by Senator John McCain, “If we allow homosexuals to engage in sexual relations, how can we prosecute straight troops who engage in adulterous behavior?” In response, Korb said, “Well, Senator, I guess we’ll then have to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) to also allow for adultery.”
In Judaism, classical Halakha (Jewish law) prohibits homosexual behavior (i.e., sodomy) based on Leviticus 18:22, which describes it as an “abomination.” In the Hebrew scriptures, adultery is treated as a severe moral and legal transgression, a violation of the seventh of the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20:14. Members of the LGBTQ community, including most closeted Catholic homosexual clergy, feel they would not suffer from depression and other serious mental health problems, including suicide, if only society were to accept and affirm their behavior as normal. Contrary to this thinking, Orthodox Judaism, Islam, and Christians whose beliefs are grounded in the scriptures (e.g., traditional Catholics, Missouri Synod Lutherans, etc.) believe that problems experienced by those who engage in homosexual behavior, like marital and family problems of people who commit adultery, stem from their behavior and no amount of affirmation or justification of that behavior which is against the natural and divine laws will alleviate their problems. While LGBTQ persons want people to believe they were born LGBTQ, the truth is that most of them were groomed and abused when they were young, and they are victims of learned behavior that has nothing to do with genetics.
Unlike homosexual popes, bishops, and priests, straight priests like myself do not believe that '“we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the church says about any given question.” When Pope Leo said that in response to a question about the Church changing its doctrinal teaching on homosexuality, was his use of “we” unconsciously referring to members of the LGBTQ community? And if that is the case, might Leo have been groomed and introduced to gay sex by Augustinian Fathers Reinhard J. Sternemann or Nelson Daniel Rupp, two documented predators, who were on the faculty of the Augustinian high school seminary in which Prevost was enrolled during his period of psychosexual development? The Michigan Attorney General’s sweeping investigation into Catholic clergy abuse details sex abuse allegations within St. Augustine Seminary in Saugatuck, MI, a noted site of documented abuse .
Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia Supplicans
What most Catholics missed was that before Pope Francis and Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández promulgated Fiducia Supplicans in December 2023, which allowed for the blessing of same-sex couples, they issued Amoris Laetitia in March 2016, which allowed impenitent adulterers to receive communion. Granting communion to Catholics in invalid marriages logically gave way to openly gay ABC News anchor Gio Benitez being confirmed in the Catholic Church while his same-sex partner, Tommy DiDario, stood by his side as his sponsor during the ceremony.
Unfortunately, most Catholics fail to view adultery and homosexuality in the 4,000+ year historical context, nor do they recognize the documented link between clerical sexual abuse and homosexuality. Unlike Jesus, who said to the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more” (Jn 8:11), what we hear from the highest authority in the Catholic Church about a very, very promiscuous gay priest, Monsignor Battista Ricca, is “Who am I to judge?”
The point is that complicit popes, documented to have covered up abuse before and after their elections, can never “heal the wounds of ecclesial unity” owing to their own broken and closeted existence. How can they withhold communion from adulterers when they know that gay and straight bishops and priests are almost never punished for engaging in nonconsensual and consensual sex with men and women, as well as with boys and girls? Fiducia Supplicans and Amoris Laetitia are the logical creations of mainly closeted, groomed/abused, gay Church leaders whose orientation and behavior Catholics want to deny, and the media want to cover up.
Abuse, cover-ups, and reprisals against whistleblowers continue
Another reason I believe that Pope Leo, who possesses absolute power in the institutional Church, will not heal, what Msgr. Grichting referred to as, “an increasingly weakened and disease-ridden church,” is that both he and most bishops continue to cover up abuse and punish whistleblowers. In the U.S. alone, where there are currently 21,750 priests engaged in active ministry, it is estimated that 15,000 predator priests abused over 100,000 victims since the 1950s! If I were to uncover evidence of sexual malfeasance on the part of Pope Leo in Peru, might the mainstream and Catholic media bury it just like they covered up allegations that Pope Francis preyed on seminarians when he was Master of Novices in Argentina?
When I wrote to Pope Leo on May 19, 2025, and offered to return to ministry on the condition that he discipline clerics who covered up abuse, I never received a response...
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