World Over - 2018-08-23 - Full Episode with Raymond Arroyo

in the wake of the pennsylvania grand jury report the fallout from the clergy sex abuse crisis continues the vatican and many US bishops have responded and tonight Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison Wisconsin is here to share what he believes caused the crisis and the way forward and later Catholic League President Bill Donohue will analyze the media response to the scandal in the church and finally what is the status of Catholic teaching on capital punishment after the Pope's changed to the Catechism bioethicists father tadka whole check will tell us the world over begins right now [Music] now from Washington DC Raymond Arroyo a warm welcome to all of you joining us in the United States and the world over they should propert Morlino Bill Donohue and father tadd pulchik are all straight ahead if you'd like to comment on tonight's show send me a tweet on a train and Arroyo I'll be live tweeting throughout and now some news from the world over Pope Francis has issued a letter to all the faithful condemning the crime of priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up he refers to the Pennsylvania grand jury report that alleged that more than a thousand victims were abused by priests over 70 years the Pope acknowledged that no effort to beg forgiveness will be sufficient vowing quote never again and demanding future accountability Francis blamed clericalism in part for the problem but he did not propose any specific measures or sanctions for bishops who covered up abuse Francis will be meeting with abuse victims in Ireland during the world meeting of families and the fallout from the Theodore McCarrick scandal continues to play out in the Archdiocese of Newark in wide-ranging interviews with EWTN s Catholic News Agency six priests shed light on McCarrick squat well-known reputation for having a fondness for HAMP some seminarians when he was Archbishop there and that within the archdiocese there is a subculture of actively homosexual priests that has existed for at least the past thirty years according to these witnesses fearing reprisals the priest asked to remain anonymous including one who worked with mckarrick in the Newark Chancery among the mckarrick allegations he would touch seminarians inappropriately he would invite young men to stay the night in the cathedral rectory three of the priests reported being invited to sexually charged cocktail parties with other priests in attendance one said that he was led into the room to a chorus of wolf-whistles and that he felt like he was on display after the published CNA report Cardinal Archbishop Joseph Tobin seemed to deny any knowledge of a gay subculture among the priests the archdiocese released a statement saying quote no one including the anonymous sources cited in the article has ever spoken to Cardinal Tobin about a gay subculture separately Tobin has instructed priests to no longer speak to the press about the current scandals joining me now to offer his insight into the sex abuse crisis and explain his letter to the priests and seminarians and people of his diocese is Bishop Robert Morley know he joins us from his offices in Madison Wisconsin bishop thank you for being here thank you so much for having me Raymond and greetings to you good wishes and prayers and to all of your viewers I just want to say at the outset that I do once again apologize to the victims of all the terrible abuse that's been uncovered more recently and I can't say enough about how I care for the pain that they feel and that I'm really with them in prayer and with fraternal affection I hope that I can really help to move things forward so that they will not have to worry that this is going to continue to happen to happen to happen and that's why I began my letter saying I'm tired of it so there you are Fischer Merlino you mentioned that letter you wrote this past weekend to members of your diocese in it you address this crisis of sin that we are seeing throughout the church today and you write and we'll put it up on the screen before too long we have diminished the reality of sin we've refused to call a sin a sin and we have excused sin in the name of mistaken notion of mercy there is a certain comfort level with sin that has come to pervade our teaching our preaching our decision-making and our very way of living if you permit me what the church needs now is more hatred and you go on to say hatred of sin what does that mean your excellency well it simply means that the Lord created in us a good deal of different types of psychic energy and one of those types of psychic energy Raymond is hatred so hatred must be good for something and it's good for hating evil it's good for hating evil never hating evildoers but it's good for hating evil it's good for hating the devil and I'm afraid that a lot of people today don't believe in the devil and I mean Catholics and I'm afraid that too often people have excused themselves from sinful behavior by saying I'm following my conscience and that's the highest law and that of course has been the linchpin of so many problems since the Vatican Council because the idea of the supremacy of conscience plain English is really against the documents of vatican ii the Declaration of religious freedom it's right at the beginning and it's clear as a bell conscience does not dispense us from following the teaching of the church your excellency I need to dwell on one part of the letter that has gotten a lot of attention from people around the world who read this letter you've gotten a lot of press coverage on it you target and hone in on a subculture within the hierarchy as the main problem the driving force of the sex abuse crisis that we're watching unfold before us you write this but to be clear in the specific situations at hand we are talking about deviant sexual almost exclusively homosexual acts by clerics we're also talking about homosexual propositions and abuses against seminarians and young priests by powerful priests bishops and Cardinals we are talking about acts and actions which are not only in violation of the sacred promises by some in short sacrilege but also are in violation of the natural moral law for all to call it anything else would be deceitful and would only ignore the problem further your excellency give me your sense of what you were getting at here why is that such a big deal today and why are so few people seeing the problem and the issue the way you are well there's been a desire around the part of some since our Dallas Charter was issued to keep the problem of the abuse sexual abuse by clerics to keep it away from homosexuality and move it toward pedophilia but the statistics be live at at least eighty percent of those abused were post-pubescent males being abused by other adult males now that is not pedophilia it's more properly a feeble philia it's a kind of homosexuality there's no question really about that and when I say hierarchy there's been some understand misunderstanding there I don't just mean bishops I mean bishops priests and deacons those who hold the three ranks in the hierarchy and there have been problems serious problems at all three levels and again it's rooted in this lack of sensitivity to sinfulness so many Catholics believe either that there is no afterlife or that everybody is going to heaven and when I go to funerals I see one canonization after another and you know there's no thought there's no thought of purgatory it's alleluja alleluja period well there's no period as I say often I sometimes think that some day I'm gonna be in purgatory st. Peters throw me a key and ask me to lock up after everybody else is left well save me a spot please I want to go on in your letter because you you write this it is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord the church's teaching is clear that the homosexual inclination is not in itself sinful but it is intrinsically disordered in a way that renders any man stabili afflicted by it unfit to be a priest and the decision to act upon this disordered inclination is a sin so grave that it cries out to heaven for vengeance now some will say bishop reading this letter that you are blaming homosexuality for the problems in the church and for the sex abuse crisis you would say what I would say that homosexuality is at the root of this there I'm for reasons that I just explained Raymond I don't have any hatred in my heart for homosexuals I don't have any desire to bash them but I do owe them respect by speaking the truth and this is a very difficult area in which to speak the truth because the minute you speak the truth you're called a hater I mean that's along the lines of some of the mail that I've been getting but I think it's so so very important to keep in mind the hierarchy means priests bishops deacons and that homosexual subculture doesn't mean an institution it just means situations like having beach houses where certain people come and gather frequently and illicit behavior sinful behavior happens there well if that kind of thing is happening that's an instance of a gay subculture I think some people think when I say gay subculture that bishops have gotten together and organized this well I first of all I if somebody said do you really believe that I would say no and secondly I don't have any proof that anything like that had happened that so when some bishops are saying what what's this about a subculture I don't see any subculture I think they mean they don't see an institution an organized institution but that's not what this is this is something where it's easy to turn and look the other way while certain behavior is engaged so you do and believe it's got to stop looking away do you believe that this is primarily in the seminaries in the seminary formation houses we're reading reports which I'll get to in a minute I mentioned it earlier in in Newark New Jersey Catholic news agency broke this story this week six priests coming forward that claim there has been a homosexual subculture in the seminary there for 30 years Cardinal Tobin denies that subculture exists well I you know again I in terms of the seminaries that I've used for the sake of complete transparency we did we were sending collegians regularly to the college program at Seton Hall st. Andrews Hall as they call it and of course I find out that there was a problem there but I must say that my seminarians and I are in very good contact and while they were there I never had anyone speak to me about anything like that in the college seminary I don't know anything about the the elegant but in the college seminary I never had anybody speak a word to me about that so again while I want to get the facts out and I want there to be that kind of an investigation I'm not claiming to have the facts now so I'm not saying this one should resign that one should be fired I'm not in any position to do that now some would say your excellency and reading your piece reading the reaction to it people say the vow of celibacy should be lifted or you should let priests marry your thought on that as a solution to what we're dealing with here well I think if we look at the state of marriage in the world where people don't even have a clear idea of what marriage is I think to say that this is going to be the solution is more than far-fetched I don't know how it would work for instance when we had marriage among the Eastern clergy in Eastern Europe the role of women in society that kind of allowed for that was very different from the role of women in society that we have now in the United States and I don't know culturally if that would work if women would really be willing to enter into that kind of a marriage where she was always considered the priests helper because that's how people would look at her and maybe she'd want to have a life of her own now that would make things so easy and then worse than that is the problem of divorce I don't see any reason to believe that priests are going to have a rate of divorce any lower than any other group as a matter of fact it might be higher because they've had so little experience usually until a higher age so I you know if if priests are going to get divorced well then even if they don't remarry or whatever what are we going there are a lot of people in parishes who would say I don't want to priest now is the bishop going to be liable for them and then also to take care of their family it would bankrupt the church it's not it's not very feasible from a practical point of view and people who say things like that should really think it through a little bit more carefully let's talk for a moment about your suggestion here that and I have to return to this it's made most of the news where you seemed to be saying gay men should not be allowed in the priesthood but there are other clerics who were saying something very different Cardinal soup which in Chicago had this to say I'll put this up in an interview he said I really believe that the issue here is more about a culture of clericalism in which some are ordained and they feel they're privileged and therefore protected so that they can do what they want people whether heterosexual or homosexual need to live by the gospel he added that he would not want to reduce this simply to the fact that there are some priests or homosexual I think that is a diversion to get away from the clericalism that's much deeper as a part of this problem your reaction to that is clericalism the problem well first of all I would say that clericalism to me means that the priest is put up on a pedestal or the bishop is put up on a pedestal in in a few words that's what it means to me I haven't seen that I mean I know what it was when I was a little boy and I was growing up and the priest and the bishop around a pedestal priests today can be treated very poorly in a parish and I can vouch I've been a bishop for almost 20 years I can vouch that the treatment that I receive hardly places me on a pedestal so that's what I mean by clericalism and I don't experience it I don't experience it my own life I think the real problem though here in terms of celibacy is celibacy doesn't only involve physical abstinence it involves an attitude of mind and heart an attitude which is a virtue and that is accepting God's grace to sacrifice the companionship of marriage when the celibate is abstaining physically what he's thinking is my God the Lord gives me the grace to sacrifice the companionship of marriage my god and that brings about a kind of quasi mystical sense of the presence of God in one's life now if one is homosexual one is not attracted to marriage of a woman that is one is not attracted to marriage and if you're not attracted to something you can't sacrifice it so even if there is abstinence in the body the attitude of mind and heart for someone who is genuinely homosexual cannot be present that is I'm sacrificing marriage and it hurts meaning a marriage to a woman no Cardinal George said years ago you have to you you have to see yourself as a father and as a husband in the natural order and then because you're your supernaturally wedded to the church and if you can't see yourself that way then you really are this is an incompatible lifestyle for you I want to quickly return to this this notion clericalism because a lot of I hear a lot of it this week that clericalism is to blame that's the root of the the problem here even the Pope in his letter mentions clericalism it seems to me if clericalism is its own network of protection you know where people feel their little kings and above the law maybe that's what they're speaking to but in that sense I mean frankly ambition or does the desire for prestige or money I see that in many many professions I don't see people chasing little kids around you know or or teenagers around with with a predisposition to money or power or wealth do are they missing the mark here I mean in some ways this is a little bit like blaming a drunken collision on the tire suspension you know it seems to me we're missing the point of who and what is driving the crisis well I could only say from my point of view that clericalism as I experience it what is called clericalism has to do with wearing Kasich's or having nice vestments at mass or wearing the cassock too often and insisting upon titles and all of this some of our seminarians and younger priests want to sacrifice marriage for a clear priestly identity and they find that Kasich's and titles and nice vestments deepen their sense of the other nosov the priesthood deepen their sense that they are sacred deepen their sense that they are a mystery to themselves and that is the kind of spirituality in which they want to be formed now I think to call that clericalism is again not to listen to what they're saying I want to move on to the remedies for this your excellency only the Holy See can investigate and discipline bishops what should the bishops conference do now there are some calls to meet before in November do you think that's a good idea warranted that's a tough one for me I really I don't know because I don't know if the meeting when we think say before November our Administrative Board meets in September and I don't see that we could really put something together that would be effective before November and that's part of the problem with our conference hmm our conference can do many good things but one of the things our conference has never been able to do is to act quickly and when we run into a situation in the church that demands a swift response the conference is simply not capable it is too large it requires a bureaucracy we can't find fault with how many bishops there are in the United States at least I can't I mean that's way above my pay grade but I think that trying to pull something together that would be effective would probably draw huge amounts of demonstrators and then if we really weren't well prepared I think it could make the situation worse that's my personal opinion if some others would like to have an earlier meeting I would certainly do my best to be there I want to call your attention to Bishop Egan of Portsmouth in the UK he's suggesting that the Holy Father convene an extraordinary Synod to deal with the life and ministry of clerics and to give some guidance from the Vatican level on all of this is that needed now well I think that would be one approach and I also think that an approach that would be useful would be to have the Holy Father appoint a an apostolic visit ater to the United States who could then assemble a team and would have the faculties from the Holy Father to investigate I think something concrete has to begin and when I say I don't know if we could pull a meeting together before November I'm not saying we can't do anything I mean this does demand a more immediate response right but our conference isn't into immediate responses yeah well the church is an intermediate immediate responses which is part of the problem here I mean the US isn't alone in dealing with this you know sex abuse crisis and cover-ups I mean we're seeing it in Chile we're seeing it with Archbishop McCarrick you're seeing it in Colombia here's the question the Pope set up investigatory protocols in 2016 and a tribunal he has since dismantled those and those were constructed to discipline bishops do you think perhaps it's time to convene something like that and why shouldn't the carrot face the music in Rome well I you know I just clearly something has to be done with regard to Cardinal McCarrick I pray that he and others who have been involved in misconduct or in cover-up both of which are very seriously sinful I hope that somehow the Lord can still keep them safe in his providence whatever that might mean and I don't I don't wish them any ill as far as having a special tribunal I suspect that those who were supposed to set up the tribunal had their reasons for convincing the Pope not to do it or to postpone it and I don't know what those reasons are mm-hmm so once again if I don't have all the facts I'm stuck yeah Pope Francis is meeting with victims of sex abuse while he's in Ireland at 10:00 the world meeting of families what impact do you think this crisis is having on that meeting and how might it changed the focus of that youth synod in october well i'm very concerned about both of these situations because if for example statements were to come out of the Synod which are ambiguous as some of the statements were that came out of the last two sentence if they're ambiguous i'm i'm just afraid that it's going to unwittingly contribute to the comfort level with sin if the ambiguity tends to say there's more latitude here for what we used to call sin and i really don't think we should go that way and i suppose very honestly if it were simply up to me and this is my personal opinion that I would probably have canceled both of those events I think I would probably have canceled both meetings and then pulled together some of those resources to see what could be done concretely to compact to impact the scandal that we have now before I let you go I asked Cardinal Burke about this last week some have floated to me the idea and I think it a good one to have an independent forensic financial audit of every diocese in the United States the idea being that that would uncover the financial misdeeds which very often lead to the personal and sexual misdeeds would you support something like that and lay involvement being it an independent forensic audit I would I would and we have an independent every year mm-hmm and that audit has has always made public and that audit has uncovered in fact some misdeeds financial misdeeds that were happening in certain parishes and so you know yes I I would I would favor that III think that without somehow having the key role of the bishop as teacher Sanctifier and governor without having the those key elements compromised I think we need as much transparency and as much competent faith-filled lay involvement as is possible but the lay involvement has to be competent and it really has to be faithful these people have to be people who would be willing to make the profession of faith and take the oath of fidelity to the church they have to be that not saying they have literally have to do that but they have to be that kind of person right final question it seems to me your letter identifies that we have a recruitment a retention and an advancement problem in the church how do you cure that are there processes are there watchdogs you can install to make sure that the recruitment of priests the retention and the advancement of them up the hierarchical ladder can be protected well I can only I am doing that in this diocese and we are we're very carefully on the watch and many other bishops are very carefully on the watch to obviously some are not as vigilant as they need to be but here we're doing what we can and I think this is where maybe as a conference we could talk about best practices you know in those three areas to make sure but those things are very very well cared for in this diocese and as a matter of fact if there's been advancement it's been any significant advancement has been at the initiative of the Holy See very good Bishop Robert Morley no I thank you so much for the time and you can read Bishop Morlino full letter at Madison diocese dot org up next Catholic League President Bill Donohue but first this story among the official speakers at the world meeting of families in Dublin this week was father James Martin he is the jesuit vatican media advisor and outspoken advocate for the LGBT community father martin told the participants on thursday that it is a huge step forward for the church that his talk was allowed at the world meeting of families and further that his talk was assigned to all Catholics that the Vatican considers LGBT Catholics part of the church he told the audience that church and parishes should be more welcoming to active homosexuals and their gifts and to stop discriminating against them so the most important thing that we might be able to do for LGBT Catholics is to welcome them into what is already their church by excluding LGBT Catholics the church is falling short of it's called of being God's family by excluding LGBT Catholics you are breaking up God's family you are tearing apart the body of Christ he added that Francis is the first pope to even use the word gay also addressing the world meeting of families was embattled Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Moradi Agha the Pope's top lieutenant with the council of Cardinals in Rome he recently condemned a group of seminarians who alleged widespread homosexual behavior at the seminary in the Cardinals home diocese he spoke on Pope Francis's Revolution of tenderness as he put it and opened his talk with what news reports have called las vegas-style crooning it was a song about Pope Francis and the joy of the gospel the I even the it's catchy joining me now with his thoughts on the media coverage of the abuse crisis and some other stories of the week is the president of the Catholic League dr. bill Donahue who joins us from Manhattan bill thanks for being here give me your overall critique of this moment post mckarrick post grand jury report people are mattered in hell bill your reaction well I understand why people are livid they need to be otherwise you're not going to get the kind of reforms that we do need on the other hand the twin scandals of the summer of 18 which we will remember for a long time have to be put in perspective we're talking about old cases what McCarrick allegedly did was in the 1980s most of it the pennsylvania grand jury report the vast majority of the cases before 1990 they go back to world war ii and in every case just about every case they never substantiated anything they never gave a priest an opportunity he was accused to rebut anything and keep in mind people all the priests and not all were priests by the way some are seminarians somewhat some were brothers some were deacons but of the priests they're all either dead or they have been leia sized they no longer in ministry so keeping perspective this is not going on in 2018 mm-hmm do you buy the notion veil of what we discussed this with Bishop Morlino earlier that clericalism is the cause of this crisis the Pope Cardinal Tobin others have mentioned clericalism is the root cause you've got two problems here you've got the enabling bishops not all of them just a few and you've got the predator priests in the case of the Enabling Bishop one could argue that clericalism a kind of a sense that we know better attitude certainly played a role in the case of the molesting priests almost all of them were homosexuals so you've got to look at it that way but one thing we have to be very careful about Pope Francis on August the 20th came out with a wonderful letter and he warned about clericalism he included the laity thank you the lady be very very careful of some of these lay men and woman who now are riding their high horse that they're going to resolve all the problems they come to the table with their hands clean remember jesus warned us about the purest okay now we are not a sinless church and I'm not excusing anyone I'm simply saying we live in a time of hyperventilation of where everything is overheated and yes we have to get the guilty but we must protect the innocent there are too many priests and bishops who I'm afraid I'm gonna get sundered because someone's gonna drop a dime and they're gonna say well something happen to me he groped me in 1965 or something we must protect the rights of the priests and the bishops as well as go after the bad guys yeah you know bill I've been covering in the secular realm you've got actors you've got actresses you've got directors charged with sexual malfeasance that turned out to be untrue it was a scorned lover or it was a bad relationship this same thing at times happens in the church but also bill you have to say there does seem to be a new awareness of this and the outrage is real because the fallout is real there are victims out there and that's where I think things have gotten so overheated everybody's heart can go out to these victims and you really do feel you want justice for them and if they're malefactors out there today and there are they should be brought to justice and they should be removed if they're still in office now you issued a detailed response to the Pennsylvania grand jury report earlier this month you've taken some heat over it some see it as a defense of the indefensible bill is now the appropriate time given that feeling that people are going through right now and the hurt and the raw emotions is now the right time to talk about what might be wrong with this grand jury report it's know there's no better time than now because if I did that next month nobody's gonna care I had to get out right away to get out in front of it I don't want falsehoods out there people are saying this is going on today let me tell you something the reforms issued by the bishops in 2002 or working let me give you two quick examples everybody knows the Cardinal McCarrick is no longer Cardinal all these allegations against them there's a lot of evidence there okay let's assume he is guilty all right how do we know he's guilty do people realize this because cardinal Dolan turned him in do they realize that they had these strictures in in place the bishop since 2002 cardinal Dolan has his own independent reconciliation and compensation program someone came forward they investigated they found it out now that's not too easy for one sitting Cardinal to talk to another cardinal and say listen we got enough evidence in here and we've got to go to the to the authorities about this the other case is in the Diocese of Allentown Pennsylvania just this week a priest allegedly was involved in groping and doing some other things to a 17 year old girl now the media say well the authorities got a hold of wait a minute the bishop there in Allentown found out about this in early June he contacted the authorities in other words the system is in fact working today so that's why I say people have to understand I'm not against reforms I'm simply saying that the reforms that the bishops made and many of the diocese far indeed working I just want to pick up on something you said about Cardinal McCarrick part of the reason we know he's guilty is the Pope stripped him of public ministry so within the investigatory purview of the Vatican and Cardinal Dolan's Review Board was a part of that they discovered wrongdoing and he was guilty at least in the eyes of the church okay now whether he's criminally found guilty or they they moved to that level that remains to be seen I want to talk for a moment you mention in your grand jury debunking release that no one was found guilty of anything no one bit almost nobody quite frankly let's put it this way nobody got a chance to rebut it now I know of bishops who have written to Shapiro the Attorney General and said what you have here is false I know a Cardinals who have written to him and said what you've said here is false did he did he bother to take it out no the if these guys are dead how in the world can they rebut the claims so our unit limit so you're disputing the facts as laid out by that grand jury report what I'm saying simply this they might all be true they might all be false obviously not most most of them are probably not false I would guess maybe half of them might be true why do I say that because I've read all these studies and I've read what they've said about the John Jay study between 1950 and 2002 they said four percent of the priests in this country had a credible accusation made against them but only two percent of them had ever ever substantiated so they're saying three hundred priests not all my priests I'm thinking the figure might be closer to 150 but we'll never know remember a grand jury report is not factual unlike this guy who works at the Weekly Standard Andrew Fergus and he says they're factual what no grand jury report is factual and the old adage is you could prosecute a and dine a ham sandwich this is hearsay a lot of it is true but none of it is rebuttable it's one-sided that's why it's not evidentiary attorney-general Shapiro in in Pennsylvania claims that Presley almost every instance of child abuse found was too old after the first I mean a lot of you know we wouldn't have any of this if not with a grand jury report right right but I want to compare apples with apples what what percent for example of the abuses well Shapiro ever go after the public schools why are we being set up this is cherry-picking let me give me a quick example here let's say you did a study of street crime and you found out that non-whites were disproportionately represented and you and that's what you talk about then you conclude that there must be something congenitally wrong about blacks and Hispanics because they're involved in a lot of crime well there is such a thing called white collar crime isn't there on Wall Street doesn't it take place in lawyers offices white-collar people in the corporate world if you did if you don't look at that and make that make that comparison you would assume wrongly that people of color are somehow a bunch of criminals there's a lot a lot of white people walking around very rich people who are criminals do I want to see justice be done across the board I think it's a mistake with the bishops to open up they're books to anybody unless there's one unless one condition is met you tell me Attorney General you tell me District Attorney that you're not just gonna cherry-pick the Catholic Church that you're also good to demand that the public schools and the Jewish schools and the Protestant schools and everybody else that will open up their books and then we'll do so otherwise we are submerging the church in the name of justice should the statute of limitations be lifted to prosecute some of these cases as the grand jury rested here bill that they don't listen we have been lied to by the by Shapiro and by Mike Rossi he's the one pushing it when I say they're lied to I know this stuff I'd live this stuff every day and rebuild that Razi and that Shapiro's endorsed doesn't cover the public schools and unless you explicitly cover the public schools they are protected by what's called the doctrine of sovereign immunity and that means you have 90 days to file a claim you don't have so if you want to suspend the debt the statute of limitations fine they I push for that in New York push for the public schools guess what happened in 2009 she's no longer an assembly woman Margaret Marquis said okay we'll include the public schools guess who went bonkers the teachers unions the school superintendent's the principals they said you can't go back reason why we have statutes of limitation is because most of the witnesses are either dead or they're the memories have faded so I am for equal justice before the law I don't think any bishop should ever cooperate with any law enforcement unless in fact the same playing field is being invoked against everybody else in the public and in the private sector hmm well the bishops are already pledging to work with law enforcement I mean you mentioned a moment ago a bishop who turned over a malefactor don't you think that's a good idea all right no I don't think it's a good idea you don't ever make publicly accuse you go you go forward with the convicted no I do want to know the names of the convicted this bishop accountability has the names of priests up there who were who were accused and then found innocent their names are up there by bishop accountability I wouldn't trust them they think the head of Bishop accountability Terence McCarran and said a few years ago that cardinal Dolan was hiding 55 priests I've contacted him several times I said please give me the names of the 55 priests whom Dolan is protecting he's never answered me what I'm saying is that the lawful lot of people are lying you've got troops you've got half-truths and you've got out-and-out lies the Catholics have to be very careful about how they filter these things but yes get the bad guys absolutely we saw an outgrowth of this report this week an act of violence against a priest in Indiana a Byzantine Catholic priest he was beaten before mass the the abusers who came into the sacristy said this is for all the kids they yelled at him do you fear more violence like this and what is the answer here bill well I've certainly got my share of threats I'll tell you that and all I can tell you is this the person responsible obviously is the assailant but secondary responsibility or at least tertiary has to go to those people who are the Catholic haters I'm talking about the Catholic suing lawyers and the Catholic aiding activists do you not believe that there is a network a subculture at the seminary in seminaries that are actively promoting the kind of behavior that we're seeing play out in these reports whether they be of ancient pedigree or not well well we know that for the Richard mcbrian a man of the left said there's a homosexual subculture for the cousins a man on the Left says there's a homosexual subculture father Andrew Greeley a man of the left called it the lavender mafia we have problems in Boston we have problems in France we have problems in Honduras let's not worry about World War two I want to find out what's going on in the seminaries today why if there is a homosexual subculture that's still going on and no doubt there is I wonder how it's going on in Rome we all know what's going on in Rome it's not just the United States we also have to be careful here I don't want an attack on all gay priests people might be surprised to hear that I want to get the people who are guilty not the ones who are innocent but of course there's a subculture and that has to be busted bill donohue thank you for being here you can follow Bill's work at the Catholic League dot org a few weeks ago Pope Francis made news by altering age-old church teaching on the death penalty what has been the church's understanding of the morality of capital punishment and what will be the net effect of those changes joining me to discuss this and a few other stories is neuroscientist and director of education at the National Catholic bioethics Center father tadpole sure I sat down with him recently here in DC take a look father Ted several weeks ago the Holy Father changed the teaching on capital punishment I want to put on the screen what that looks like get your reaction to this recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate Authority following a fair trial was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable albeit extreme means of safeguarding the common good today however and here's the edition there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes more effective systems of detention had been developed which ensure the due protection of citizens but at the same time do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person your thoughts on this change and ethically what was the teaching before and is this new teaching just as ethical all right I would say this is definitely a change but what it amounts to in essence is a change of emphasis so you know in other words I think here what we're looking at is a development of pastoral practice rather than a development of doctrine ah so you don't think the Pope has changed doctrine you know don't see this as a break with doctrine no not a break with doctrine it is a offered Prudential judgment on the part of the Holy Father regarding the question of circumstances and circumstances he's saying look I'm going to provide you with what is a reasonable read of the current state of affairs in the world and why we as Catholics should not support this so that's what I see him doing is say I'm gonna lay this out for you and I do think that in general even when when a Pope does that there should be a general sense of us wanting to obey as a first instinct that judgment that is being made even do you believe that he's saying it's intrinsically immoral in all cases to do this no so he's not invalidating the death penalty he's just saying not unlike John Paul that there are almost no circumstances where it's necessary precisely and really he's going so far as to almost say I really believed there's no circumstance where he's he's drawing his line but it is a clear drawing of a line it's a clear making of a judgment of prudence and so he'll say for example that we have a good system of incarceration you can have people in jail for a long time Europeans and Americans have a good they do it and you can raise to say that for the village in China or Africa in Africa I agree there's gonna be all kinds of tribal you know conflicts can be situations where you don't have the ability to do this potentially but I think he's making a read and saying this is how it looks to me the direction is heading and I'm going to offer this as a revision here to the Catechism 75 laymen churchmen of clergy as well as lay scholars have signed a petition asking the cardinals to implore the pope to restore the original teaching i'll put up what they are writing they say since the present roman pontiff has now more than once publicly manifested his refusal to teach this doctrine and as rather brought great confusion upon the church by seeming to contradict it we hereby call upon your eminences to advise his holiness that it is his duty to put an end to the scandal to withdraw this paragraph from the Catechism and to teach the Word of God unadulterated yeah do they have grounds to challenge the Pope like that well it seems to me that they're clearly recognizing a lack of clarity in terms of the direct continuity with the preceding tradition mm-hmm and they're saying in virtue of this we would like greater clarity now I think this lack of clarity has occurred in other contexts as well and there's a sense in which of course we would all like to have it absolutely clear but you know there were there was a commentary that was released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prior to the actual release of the yes the Catechism and it made it very clear that this is not a break with the tradition or a new teaching but that it was consonant with that proceeding I feel like we're living through amoris Laetitia all over again we're you know that wasn't a break with the tradition but it's a break in practice so if it's a break in practice isn't that a break with the tradition well it's draw the line and we've told Catholics for generations if you have a question go to the Catechism now the Catechism is saying something it didn't say yesterday well is that a change or it's not a change I mean it's a change but this Pope we have to understand is so passed orally minded but a lot of times this becomes kind of the central focus of what he does and it sort of obliterates then the possibility of further discourse around substantive doctrinal issues which in a sense to him are just not in his purview as he's focused on those pastoral details so that's that's how I really think this has to be framed it can't be framed as a genuine break with what has preceded it is clearly a judgement that he is offering of his own assessment I think it's hard for the laity to understand that when they read a catechism yeah because the Catechism is where they go to get doctrinal reinforcement and clarity I know the uses uses a word though that I mean I think for people it's a new word this word inadmissible right you know he doesn't say it's intrinsically wrong he doesn't use language that would traditionally declare this to be all were intrinsically evil trinsic ly evil he doesn't do that he says it's inadmissible what does that mean well inadmissible is almost a legal term I mean it's a term we would say if you fail to sign the contract in the signature line then the contract is inadmissible or what about if you say something like this that it's inadmissible in the catholic tradition to charge 35 percent interest rates on a credit card that would be user e so it's inadmissible but it doesn't mean that sometimes you might not have grounds for charging 35 percent interest that would be morally defensible you have been preaching III want to change topics you've been traveling the country preaching and teaching about Humanae Vitae which is all the six landmark encyclical it is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year what has been the reception as you go about the country and given what we're seeing with the sex abuse crisis where did we go wrong and what might Humanae Vitae have to still teach us well i think we we have a clear crisis of understanding of the church's sexual teachings and we've had this for a long time and i think when you talk about among catholics in general and perhaps from the point of view of those who are charged with preaching and sharing the fullness of the message that there are many ways in which there have been deficits and failures and that has potentially played out then in the direction that the scandal has gone I mean people said well in 2002 it was addressed now we see it coming back in a new and and perhaps greater firestorm because the realization that this has roots that extend then the whole branch is all the way up to the top and so there clearly is I think a an issue here of not teaching what the church has clearly articulated now there's there's a component of Catholics who recognize this you asked about my traveling around the country is there receptivity definitely people want to hear this message they want their pastors to share it and preach it and when they hear it in its fullness they accept it there's an openness to yeah so it's just that I think we're in a place where people have a fear of preaching this in its fullness and part of the consequence of that is that they themselves may be in compromised situations and you know this has come out in some of these scandals the country saying that doctors may be permitted to end the lives of dementia patients what is going on here yeah this is remarkable this is a kind of expansion of powers that seems to be occurring in Great Britain General Practitioners there are being told look if you have dementia if you have somebody who's in a coma somebody maybe who's had a stroke other mental issues well sure they could live a long time if they're on a feeding tube but you may be able to convene a best interests committee and discuss what is in the best interests of this patient and argue and hold to a position that you can withdraw the feeding to so as to cause the death by starvation and dehydration it's very interesting Raymond that the the push for this they also say if this is done very important that you not notate on the death certificate that the person died from starvation and dehydration you have to list whatever else was going on the dimension but don't mention that so already you see there's a problem hiding the aphasia putting it under the rock I want to read this this is a statement of the British Medical Association what they're proposing it reads like this due to the degenerative nature of their condition these patients are on an expected downward trajectory and will invariably die usually as a result of their underlying condition although perhaps not imminently and could potentially go on living for many years well father you and I are on a downward trajectory I knew everybody's on a downward trajectory does this language concern you it certainly does it's a language that is imprecise and it's a language that fails also to recognize that of course there will be situations where removing feeding tubes may make sense when you're dealing with a situation where a person is a few hours left or were there are complications that arise but none of that nuance is part of this it's just look people their lives the quality of life you're gonna die anyway is going downhill here let's just kind of start pulling things out as long as we get kind of consensus among a few who are caregivers how related might this be before we move on to standardized care and and and universal health care that's offered in Bru Great Britain I suspect there are connections there I think when this one figure that gets repeated a lot is that most of the expenses that are put out for somebody during their lifetime medical expenses they'll happen at the end and they'll say even you know the final months but look that's the kind of system we need to structure so that we get proper care at the end and we support people we don't abandon them father Ted beholder thank you for the insight as always we'll check in with you soon great thank you thank you that is all the time we have for now until next week the show continues on Facebook and Twitter you can like me on Facebook follow me on Twitter the links are at Raymond Arroyo dot-com be sure to join us next week until then we'll be scouting the world over for all that is seen and unseen on behalf of the staff and crew of EWTN news thanks for watching I'm Raymond Arroyo from Washington DC I know [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 105,350

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Keywords: wot06020, ytsync-en, wot

Id: cTZ7hoPqtjM

Length: 59min 46sec (3586 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018