The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 84 - It's Time for the Church to Ruthlessly Root Out Sex Abusers

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

There must be a purge in the Catholic Church to expose, expel, and punish sex predators. It must be brutal and ruthless and far reaching. There is no other way at this point. Let's talk about three steps the Church can take to finally rid itself of this evil. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A grand jury report about the sex abuse of children by priests in Pennsylvania was released yesterday. Over 300 predator priests are named in the document. The specifics are graphic and horrifying. They do involve, of course, violent sexual assault and rape and sometimes the coordinated abuse of children by multiple priests in the same parish. And, of course, the opportunity for abuse, as we have seen in so many other cases, was furnished by bishops and other church officials who either look the other way. or actively helped to cover up the crimes. Now, I want to mention just a few specific details from this report of specific crimes that occurred against children.

And, of course, I should warn you that these details are extremely, extremely disturbing and graphic, and certainly not suitable to listen to if you have kids in the room right now. So if that's the case, then turn off the video or the podcast, come back to it later. But I do think that we should look at a few of these examples, just so we understand how evil this is. All right.

In one case, a boy was forced to stand naked, posing like Christ on the cross, while priests took pictures of him and added them to a collection of child pornography that they produced and distributed on the campus of the church. It quite literally sounds like something from a horror movie. It sounds like something from, it sounds made up, it sounds fictional, but it's not. But it gets worse. These priests would actually mark boys who are being groomed for abuse and who are desensitized to abuse and thus are easier to abuse. They would mark them so that other predator priests would know and could then abuse them as well.

And the way that they would mark them is that they would give them. these boys a gift of a gold crucifix to wear around their necks. And if other predator priests saw that gold crucifix around the next of a boy, they knew that he would be vulnerable to abuse. In another case, a priest raped a young girl and then arranged for her to get an abortion, and his bishop heard about the situation and wrote a letter of condolence to the priest who had raped the girl. In another case, a priest, um, a priest, um, a priest, molested a boy over the course of a couple of years, he admitted to church officials that he had engaged in naked, quote, horseplay with the boy. And yet, he was sent for treatment

for a few months, and then he was allowed to continue in ministry for seven more years. In another case, a priest raped a little girl while he was visiting her in the hospital after she had gotten her tonsils removed. He visited her in the hospital and raped her. In another case, a priest forced a boy to give him oral sex, and then afterwards washed the boy's mouth out with holy water to, quote, purify him. In another case, a priest molested a 12-year-old boy admitted his crime to a church official, but the diocese ruled that the abuse wouldn't, quote,

necessarily be a horrendous trauma to the victim. and so they didn't do anything else. And on and on and on. There are over a thousand victims in this report, so there are many more cases like this, but I just, I physically can't read any more than that. And I doubt you could physically listen to any more than that.

The point that I'm trying to get to here, and I think you understand now, this is demonic, straight up. This is Satanism. What else can you call it? There is a virus in the Catholic Church, and it has to be rooted out and crushed. There has to be a purge in the church.

And I don't think that purge has really happened yet. I think very clearly it has not. And I don't see any way for this purge to happen unless it is ruthless and brutal and uncompromising. If we have to err on the side of being merciless or being tolerant, that I think we need to err on the side of being merciless. us every time when it comes to this. Now, unfortunately, the laws in our country won't allow us to take these priests and hang them,

which they so richly deserve. Even less will allow us, will it allow us to burn them at the stake, which I think would be poetic in many ways. But we can't do that. But we can expose them. We can shame them, rebuke them, and hopefully they can be locked in cages for the rest of their mortal lives. See, you know, I think Catholics are tempted to believe that the scandals are kind of behind us and that that was then, this is now. But the Cardinal McCarrick case, which is just coming out in the last few weeks, and now this in Pennsylvania, I think they clearly show that this is not behind us. The cancer has not been completely removed.

And what happens when you don't completely remove a cancer? It grows back. So it must be completely totally removed. It has not been. and I think when you see the reluctance of most priests and bishops to come forward, even now, and speak passionately and publicly against these crimes, that yet again shows that the problem is not in the past, because the predators and the cowards who aid and abed them remain. And so that's one thing.

You know, the average Catholic goes to church, they're not necessarily going to know if abuse is going on. They can't. It's not something they can see for themselves, obviously. but they can see moral cowardice among their leaders, and there is a lot of it, a lot in the American church. They can see that. And I think it's a pretty safe bet. As long as the church is infected by these spineless, gutless cowards,

as long as they are there, the predators will remain as well, because that is the environment in which the predators thrive. So what can be done to root out this problem? Well, there are many steps that canon should be taken. I want to focus on just three of them right now. Okay. The first step, as I've already argued, and I'll argue again, homosexuals must be banned from the priesthood, no exception.

They must be banned. I said this has to be ruthless, brutal, uncompromising. And so that's one of those steps. Every homosexual priest banned. Now, I know that not every victim in Pennsylvania was a boy. I even mentioned a few cases where girls were abused, but most of the victims were boys. And across the country, over the last several decades, a vast majority have been boys. I've written in other places that the most reliable study that's been done on this has shown that over 80% of the victims, over 80% are boys.

Which means that a vast majority of the predators are males attracted to other males. Now, you can if you want, you can come back with silliness about how men who molest boys aren't gay, but I don't think that claim even warrants a response because it is so idiotic. It is so contemptible. And it is contemptible because the person who makes that claim knows what they're saying is stupid, yet they make it anyway in an effort to prevent measures that could protect children from being raped. And so that's why they're saying, these are people who care more about protecting the LGBT community than they do about stopping children from being raped.

And there are a lot of people out there like that. And every single person right now who might be trying to make a comment in the comment section saying something, well, just because a man molests a boy, that doesn't mean he's gay, that's stupid, that's idiotic, it's contemptible, you know it. You know what you're saying makes no sense. You damn well know that a man who goes after a boy is gay. If a man is not gay, he's not going to be a true. He's not going to be going after boys.

This is a very simple equation. There's no getting around it. It's very simple. Do I think that every homosexual is a child molester? No. But here's the thing. We all have to understand. Most child molesters in the church are gay.

The vast majority are gay. That's the fact. That's not my claim. That's not my argument. That's not my deduction. that's just empirically proven fact. The only question now is whether or not we will do something about it. And we have to understand the problem of homosexuals in the church goes beyond the abusers.

This is, as I say, an environment, a culture that has been constructed. There is an actual conspiracy in the church among homosexual priests and bishops. A conspiracy. This is not the stuff of Hollywood. This is real. This is actual conspiracy. Those who, if you haven't read into this, if you're not paying attention, then you might not know this. But anyone who has read about it and has paid attention knows that this is the case. The homosexuals in the priesthood conspire with each other to intimidate and blackmail others into silence.

That's what they do. And as I just meant, as I just read one example of it, they even conspire with each other to coordinate their abuse. of boys. Now, just for an example, for an illustration of this, there was a sermon delivered by a Father Edwin Palka at a church in Florida a few weeks ago. And this man, Father Palka, is one of the good and courageous priests. And as a courageous priest, he is, I fear, in a very small minority in the American church. But he actually got up in front of his congregation a few weeks ago. And I have this sermon because they posted it in the bulletin in their church bulletin, which was then put online. He got up in front of his congregation. And apparently he's been doing

a series of sermons on this. But he explained how this works and how the actively homosexual priests and bishops operate. Now, I want to read just the first couple of paragraphs of this to set it up and then I'll summarize the rest of it. But so here's a little bit of what he said. He said, one question that was asked after last week's homily was, why don't good priests and good bishops blow the whistle on the abusive priests and bishops? Many people still don't, and I believe most priests still don't, understand just how evil the active homosexual or homosexual activist priests and bishops are, not understanding the extent of their depravity and wrongly thinking that there are simply normal men

who just struggle with their sexual desires and sometimes might fail to remain chaste, but are really truly repentant when it happens and strive to confess their sins and do penance, they cannot possibly grasp the hellish depths to which the active homosexual clergy will go to persecute, lamb-based, punish, humiliate, and blackmail, anyone who stands in their way or threatens their way of life. Let me be clear, the act of homosexual priests and bishops treat their sexual mortal sin as if it is a good and a God-given good at that, if they even believe in God, something of which I am very doubtful, at least in the Catholic understanding of who God is.

Nay, more than a good. They are convinced that it is the good to be able to go to any, repeat any length, to force others to engage in it, to accept it, or to, at the very least, ignore it and pretend that it doesn't exist, or that's not harmful enough to mention or try to eradicate. They do not struggle with their disordered sexual desires, as so many others do, but rather they revel in them. With that is my premise, let me explain why few good priests and bishops will openly challenge their brother priests and bishops when it comes to this particular sin. And I won't read the rest of

the verbatim, but he explains, he gives just one example of how this happens. He explains that when men enter into the seminary, as part of this process, they are asked to reveal a lot of very personal information about themselves, which makes sense. It makes sense that, and this is one thing that the church should be doing. It's like, we need to know about this man who's coming in and wants to be a priest. And especially because he's about to take on. He's about to take on a huge amount of responsibility. He's going to be sacrificing quite a bit theoretically. And so they need to know about it. So he tells him a lot about their information, a lot of information about themselves. And this information is kept in a file. Now, ostensibly, that file is there for a good reason

so that he can be, you know, so that his superiors can help him and guide him and they know what he struggles with so they can kind of look out for him. That's the idea behind this file. And that file can grow as he continues to struggle with things and he makes mistakes and whatever things end up in the file. Well, now you see what can obviously happen here. Now there is a file of very personal information about this man. and the homosexual priests and bishops can use that file to blackmail him. What's more, he gives one basically theoretical example, but an example that represents things that actually happens.

So he mentions one thing that the act of homosexual bishops can do to use this file against a priest. He mentions a case, well, in fact, let me just read it. He says, suppose a priest's file were. reveals that as a teen, he was sexually abused by an adult male. As a result of this formative abuse, he struggled with homosexual desires as an adolescent and into his early adulthood, but always remained chase. Once ordained as a priest, he spoke out fervently against the acceptance and promotion and legalization of homosexual activity and other sexual sins. His active homosexual

bishop, knowing his past, makes him the Boy Scout chaplain, where he will be working closely with the bishop's hand-picked and openly active homosexual lay diocesan scout leaders hoping and even encouraging him to finally fall to his boyhood abuse-induced homosexual desires and sexually abuse one or more of the scouts. While a continual perpetuation of this sin is most greatly desired by the homosexual bishop, even one close call is enough for a lifetime of blackmail. So you see what happens. They know the darkest secrets of these priests so they can use that against them to try to induce them into sin so they can then use it against them. This is a priest getting up in front of his congregation and revealing this. He has nothing,

let me just tell you, he has nothing to gain by saying this, nothing at all. He is putting everything on the line by saying this. So there is no reason to doubt him whatsoever. He has risked quite a bit. And this is in line with what other priests have in moments of candor said, whether anonymously or speaking out publicly, which rarely happens. But when they do, and they're honest about it, these are the kinds of stories. There's another example. Maybe it was from this priest or another that I recently heard, where priests who are actively gay and who have abused boys, they will seek out heterosexual priests for confession.

And so they'll go, even though they're not, they're not, they're not, they're not, to, they're not really repenting at all, but they'll go to confession and they will tell all of their horrible crimes to this heterosexual priest knowing, and the only reason they do it, is so that they know that now that priest can't go and tell anyone. Because according to church law, there is a seal in the confessional, and whatever you say in the confessional, the other, the priest cannot ever repeat it to anyone, which is a rule that, of course, makes a lot of sense. otherwise nobody would ever go to confession. But these homosexual priests will use that.

They will use it like a weapon to seal other priests into silence. So these are the kinds of things that happen. Again, it is just demonic. Number two, what else can be done? The good priests and bishops have to come out and rebuke with righteous fury. They have to be heroes like Father Palka. And even with, and it's understood now that some of them being blackmailed or being pressured, you know, horrible things are happening. But still,

they need to come out like Father Palka and be heroes, be courageous, even if it means they're going to be personally destroyed because their own secrets are going to come out. At a certain point, you've got to do the right thing. And, you know, these various bishops who have issued statements about how sad they are, how grief-stricken, that's not going to do. Cardinal Worrell, who was bishop in Pittsburgh while these things were happening, and has given. guilty of cover-ups himself. He came out with a very limp-risted kind of lament about the tragedy of sexual abuse. But no, this is not a tragedy. It is wickedness straight from the pit of hell. That's what it is. It's not just a tragedy. It is wickedness from hell. And that's what needs to be

said. We don't want to hear about tragedies anymore. We don't want to hear about your sadness. We want to hear you call down the wrath of God on the perpetrators. That's what we want to hear. We want to hear fire and brinstone. We want you to show us, if you're a priest or a bishop, we want you to show us that you are disgusted and enraged by what's going on, or else we'll suspect that you don't care or worse. I mean, I just don't, if you're a priest,

how could you even how could you do anything but get up there on Sunday at the pulpit and just rail against this as I say fire and brimstone righteous anger that's what's needed now nothing else will do nothing else is going to solve it and we have to name names because for every priest who raped a boy there could well be at least one more priest who knew about it and remain silent and those priests are are guilty as well. I'd say they're as guilty as the actual rapist because cowardice is a moral evil and there has been quite a lot of that kind of evil. And that is the evil that, as I said, that is the evil which creates kind of the foundation and the environment and the structure upon which these other things happen.

Third thing, last thing. The lay people in the church have to start to use the power, that they have, and they do have power. They have power because they have money. So churches that have been involved in abuse and cover up must be starved of money by the parishioners unless and until the church can come forward, beg for forgiveness, rebuke those who committed those sins in those acts, and rebuke them convincingly, and then clearly outline what steps they have taken to rectify the problem. There has to be full transparency and transparency. full accountability. Any church that will not be fully transparent and fully accountable when it comes to this issue deserves to die. And the faithful will just have to drive a bit

further to a different church. So I think those are three steps that canon should be taken. I'm under no illusion that any of them actually will be taken, but they need to be. And if they are not, then I don't see how this problem gets solved. Thanks for listening. Everybody, thanks for watching. Godspeed.