PURITAN NEWS WEEKLY
03/12/04
COVER-UP!
By J. Parnell McCarter
Throughout the history of the Roman Catholic Church, there has been on-going criminal activity and immorality covered up by the Church. Various tactics have been employed by the Church to silence those who would make public these crimes and immoralities. A recent Washington Times article (see http://washtimes.com/metro/20040310-105348-7459r.htm and below) reveals one method of intimidation being employed. It should be noted that within the Roman Catholic priesthood, “to express insults and to excite hatred or contempt against the Church” is an ecclesiastical crime. In practice, that seems to mean publicly revealing crimes and sins committed by the Roman Catholic clergy. It should also be noted how the article lends further evidence to the existence of a sodomite problem within the church, for two of the priests herein mentioned were allegedly involved in sodomite pornography.
Other articles at Puritan News Weekly have documented the cover-up of crimes and the prevalence of sodomy in the Roman Catholic priesthood.
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Priest targeted after testifying in
suit
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A Catholic priest who exposed the sexual misdeeds of
fellow clergy at three parishes in the Diocese of Arlington is being prosecuted
by his own bishop on five ecclesiastical charges.
The Rev. James R. Haley, an Arlington priest, will
appear before a church tribunal to answer charges brought against him by the
Most Rev. Paul S. Loverde, bishop of Arlington. Presiding as judge will be the
Most Rev. Thomas G. Doran, bishop of Rockford, Ill.
The hearing is set for Wednesday at St. Charles
Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.
The charges against Father Haley include sexual
misconduct; absolution of an accomplice in sexual sin; and the "use of
instruments of social communication [the media] to injure good morals, to
express insults and to excite hatred or contempt against the Church."
He also is charged with "publicly inciting
subjects to animosities or hatred against a [bishop]" and "injuring
the good reputation of another."
Sources familiar with the case say the first two
charges involve an event in the mid-1990s involving a woman who made sexual
advances toward the priest. When he refused her, she asked for absolution,
which the priest granted.
Father Haley's attorney, Gregory Murphy, said the
priest was found not guilty of any impropriety by the former Arlington bishop,
the Most Rev. John R. Keating, who died in 1998.
"They're throwing in any issue they could find
against him," Mr. Murphy said. "So they have dug up an incident that
was, right from the start, found in Father Haley's favor."
Stephen Brady, president of Roman Catholic Faithful, a
group defending the priest, said, "These issues were brought up several
years ago and dealt with. So why is Loverde resurfacing them now?"
The bishop is exacting revenge, Mr. Brady said, for a
July 2002 court deposition which Father Haley was subpoened to give about an
affair between a married woman, Nancy Lambert, and the Rev. Daniel Verrecchia,
pastor of All Saints Catholic Church in Manassas. Father Haley was a priest at
All Saints in 1999.
Mrs. Lambert later divorced her husband, Jim Lambert,
and married Father Verrecchia, with whom she has had a child. Mr. Lambert sued
the diocese in 2002, saying Bishop Loverde knew of Father Verrecchia's
relationship with Mrs. Lambert but did not remove him from the parish.
Although the lawsuit later was dismissed, Father
Haley's testimony supported Mr. Lambert's contention that the diocese knew of
the affair months before the priest was ordered to stop seeing Mrs. Lambert.
Father Haley also exposed misconduct by two other
priests: the Rev. William J. Erbacher, who resigned as pastor of St. Lawrence
Catholic Church in Franconia after an investigation revealed he stole from
church collection plates and maintained a stash of homosexual pornography; and
the Rev. Daniel Hamilton, pastor of St. Mary's Parish in Fredericksburg, Va.,
who resigned amid accusations that he kept a collection of homosexual
pornography in his rectory bedroom.
After Father Haley made public accusations against the
priests, Bishop Loverde suspended him from all priestly functions and put him
on a small stipend, his attorney said, reducing the cleric to a hand-to-mouth
existence in different homes around the diocese.
Father Haley was in Richmond yesterday meeting with the
Rev. Scott Duarte, a canon lawyer assigned to defend him in the case.
An e-mail from him to Father Duarte obtained by The
Washington Times shows the priest learned of the trial only last Friday.
The Diocese of Arlington did not comment on the case.