Saint Satan

BOSTON -- The Vatican has defrocked the priest who was the first in Massachusetts convicted of sexual abuse more than two decades ago, the Boston Archdiocese said Friday.

In 1984, Eugene O'Sullivan was sentenced to probation after he admitted sodomizing a 13-year-old altar boy. A condition of his sentence was that he not be allowed to work with children.

But O'Sullivan was later assigned to four New Jersey parishes. He was recalled to Boston in 1992 after church officials learned of another allegation against him dating to his time in Massachusetts.

Documents from O'Sullivan's personnel file, made public in 2002, show that that the archdiocese was alerted as early as the 1960s to allegations against him.

In a 2003 deposition he gave in lawsuits filed against the archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard Law defended his decision to allow O'Sullivan to transfer, saying he wanted to give O'Sullivan a chance at "redemption."

Law resigned as archbishop of Boston but remains a cardinal.

A second priest, Paul E. McDonald, also was defrocked. According to McDonald's personnel file, he was accused of sexually abusing several boys in the 1960s, when he was a priest at St. Joseph Church in Boston.

And the Pope that oversaw years of coverup is fast-tracking to sainthood. And the cardinal that shipped pedophile priests around remains a cardinal. And the priests who did the molesting are just now getting defrocked. Those are Catholic values.

So, where did the Catholic church get the many millions of dollars they needed to pay off the victims of the abuse? From their church members. Isn't it interesting that the lay Catholics, who had nothing to do with it, are paying off people their leaders abused? And then they go to mass again the next Sunday...

But wait, there's more. Who does Rick Santorum blame? Is it the Catholics? No! It's the liberal's fault for being, well, liberal!

In July 2002, Santorum blamed sexual abuse in the Catholic Church on "academic, political and cultural liberalism." Today on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos gave Santorum multiple opportunities to take it back. Santorum refused:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s move on to another controversy you stirred up, the question of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church. You made a statement in July 2002 which has drawn a lot of fire.

You said, in a publication called Catholic On-Line, When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While there’s no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

You’ve reaffirmed that just a couple of weeks ago. Ted Kennedy, John Kerry say you have to apologize. Mitt Romney, Republican governor, says basically you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Do you still stand by that statement?

SANTORUM: Look, the statement I made was that the culture influences people’s behavior…

[snip]

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’re standing your ground…

SANTORUM: And I’m standing my ground because I tried to fight to change the church.

Last Thursday, I posted a story about a Baptist minister in North Carolina who got busted for some naughty things.

In response, I'd like to make the following Santorum style statement:

When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While there’s no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Greenville, a seat of academic, political and cultural conservatism in America, lies at the center of the storm. When a society functions in a completely sexually repressed fashion, and base all of their beliefs on improvable dogma, that leads to ignorant people doing really freaky things. Just go ask any farm animal!