What is going on in Cornwall?

Ottawa-The winter edition of the magazine The Orator (Jan-March, 1999), a quarterly published by the St. Brigid's Association of Ottawa, tells the detailed story of a sex ring involving priests, highplaced laymen, and adolescent boys in the city of Cornwall, Ontario. The charges resulting are serious, and go back as far as forty years, but the events became public only in this decade, and only gradually.

Not only are the local bishop and police involved in handling matters, but also the provincial police and the provincial Attorney General and related officials. The writer in The Orator suggests that a widespread cover-up is taking place because almost nothing has appeared in the press, and there is a "gag" order on current court actions.

Since the media and the world love to publish and hear shocking news that embarrasses the Catholic Church, and since there is a law that requires the reporting of juvenile sexual abuse, and since the earlier sex scandals involving priests and juveniles were made worse by neglect, cover-up, pay-off, and the like, one naturally wonders, Why? Why the silence on this present sex ring?

The reporter suggests pointedly that the reason is homosexuality. That is to say, there is evidence that a number of the men charged or accused (priest or lay) are homosexual, and that they have also indulged in performing sexual acts with juvenile boys, even as young as twelve, and sometimes in organized parties.

Today's climate

Today "sexual orientation" is portrayed as a "neutral" thing, while homosexual acts done in private between consenting adults have been legitimate by law since 1969.

The new sex ring revelations show that such men may, alas, prey sexually on teenage boys.

The writer, Sylvia MacEachern, points out that the official responses of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) to sexual abuse in Newfoundland and elsewhere were published seven years ago, named From Pain to Hope, and Breach of Trust. They had glossy covers and high-sounding prose about "lost credibility," "these intolerable acts," "duty of reporting a case of child sexual abuse," and so on.

Related to these booklets was the Winter Report, commissioned by the Church in Newfoundland to enquire into the Mount Cashel sexual scandals. Written by a non-Catholic, this third document blandly shifts its proper focus away from the obvious homosexual dimension of the problem; that is, the known homosexual orientation of certain offending priests (30 per cent of all, it is claimed). Instead, the report takes the less sensitive and less politically embarrassing tack of bemoaning "homophobia," or the "stigmatization of a significant portion of humankind," and "sexual stereotyping." It recommends "healthy understanding of sexuality," "feminist experience," changing "patriarchal structures," and studying "the larger social issue of child sexual abuse."

In other words, let's not embarrass homosexuals, whether priests or others, just because they are apt to fall into ephebophilia (the technical name for paedophilia [child abuse] when the child has become an adolescent). The documents appear to be making light of this sin, as if it did not do much harm to the young victim.

Cornwall

The disclosure of the alleged indecent acts in Cornwall, The Orator points out, began seven years ago. One victim went to the Church chancery seeking an apology. When none was forthcoming, he went to the police. Ten months later, the cleric involved in the original infractions was still in his parish position, the police investigation had terminated, and the file had been closed though nothing had been done.

It took one intrepid police officer, who happened to see the file, to make investigations of his own in an attempt to comply with the law. The chief result were personal attacks on him--and death threats against his family.

Soon he discovered that there were other victims, other allegations, indeed, indications of a whole network of sexual abuses, and evidence of a massive cover-up.

The Orator observes that the CCCB document Pain to Hope acknowledges that the Church has lost a great deal of credibility because of attempts to cover up intolerable acts. Breach of Trust was designed to increase awareness of sexual abuse and to "promote actions that will purge this evil from society and the Church." But, to all appearances, church officials in Cornwall behaved as though these documents had never existed, and as though similar cover-ups had not brought great discredit on the Church in the past.

More and more accusations continue to be made and there are signs of the existence of a paedophile ring and of illicit actions taking place even outside this country. The leading suspects, predominantly clergy, remain at large. And not once has the diocese offered to help the police officer responsible for pursuing the investigations to "purge this evil from our society."

As far as homosexuality among the clergy is concerned, the writer calls for drastic action by the bishops. The seminaries must screen out seminarians with homosexual orientation, she states, and expel any one known to engage in child abuse, reporting such also to the authorities. The bishops must defrock known homosexual priests, and any who are convicted of sexual molestation. Only after such actions "will Canadian Catholics believe that our bishops truly want to eradicate sexual perversion from the Church, protect children, and restore dignity to the sacred calling of the priesthood."

Comment

The drastic conclusion may yet be too little. Defrocking deviant priests and seminarians is not enough. One may add here that there should also be a vigorous reaffirmation of chastity at all levels. We must support the chastity movement led by crusaders like Marilyn Bergeron, also of Cornwall, and in the U.S. by Molly Kelly and Barbara McGuigan. We must declare the holy truth of Pope Paul VI's Humanae vitae, that contraception by spouses is a grievous offence against their sacred union, and that any condoning of illicit sex will surely lead to the other sexual sins, as we see happening around us, and as Pope Paul had predicted.

As if to confirm the need for more vigilance on the part of Catholic authorities, a July 11, 1999, full-page story in the Toronto Sunday Sun, entitled "A loss of innocence", reports that the Diocese of London, ON, is being sued for $32 million by four brother victims, molested by a local priest between 1968 and 1974, the years when the drive to make homosexuality respectable got underway in earnest.

In our opinion, seminarians with persistent homosexual tendencies should not be ordained to the priesthood. Misleading literature, such as the books by Nugent and Grammick now formally condemned, (see United States, above) should not be used as "resource material."

The Orator of January-March, 1999, is available from Saint Brigid's Association, P.O. Box 71022, Ottawa, ON, K2P 2L9 at $5.00 a copy.