Pope Francis Could Order Listecki to Open Archdiocese of Milwaukee Operation to Its Victims

U.S. Senator (R-Wisconsin), Ron
Johnson Opposed
Wisconsin Child Victims Bill
giving legal protection
against Predator Priests

Update: See also piece on the now-retired Twin Cities Archbishop Harry Flynn, " one-time head of the US bishops child sex abuse panel called police about admitted, proven or credibly accused predator priests."
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One would believe that children raped and molested is a horrendous crime that both major political parties would agree merits holding the perpetrators to account and pay the victims restitution, such as restitution can be.

Not in this life.

The Catholic Church hierarchy is maintaining its hostile stance towards rape and molestation victims, knowing the Republican Party [see Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and his work against rape victims for example] and judges such as Rudolph Randa have the church's back as both operations inflict a shared misogyny and absolute prohibition against a woman's right to choose what to do with her body.

If anyone needs to see more evidence that the Republican Party and the Catholic Church hierarchy have fallen deep into nihilism and organized criminality, the latest out of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee should awaken decent Americans.

In the federal case, Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors v. Listecki, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit questioned attorneys this week for defending a $60 million cemetery trust fund crafted by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee to shield money from victims of priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

A federal bankruptcy judge ruled in January 2013 that efforts by Listecki to insulate the $60 million from victims did not, as the church claims, violate "the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 ... and the First Amendment." [Case No. 11-20059-svk, Chapter 11, Adv. Proc. No. 11-02459  UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN
485 B.R. 385; 2013 Bankr. LEXIS 200; 57 Bankr. Ct. Dec. 119]

Judge Rudolph Randa disagreed and overruled the federal bankruptcy judge in defense of  Listecki in July 2013.

Randa's decision, a corrupt decision, drew derisive criticism across the nation from survivors and their advocates. (Goodstein, NYT)

Writes Goodstein:

The ruling reversed an earlier decision by a federal bankruptcy judge and was a victory for Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, and for his predecessor, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, who established the cemetery trust in Milwaukee in 2007. Documents made public in July revealed that when Cardinal Dolan sought the Vatican’s permission to move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust, he said it would help protect the money from legal claims.

This week a panel of the Court of Appeal for the Seventh Circuit excoriated the machinations of the slippery church and its defenders such as Randa and questioned Randa's conflict of interest, calling it "troubling."

Randa won't lose any sleep over the accusation.

As reported by Annysa Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Judges at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday appeared to challenge a key argument in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's efforts to protect $60 million it holds in a trust for the care of cemeteries from being used to pay creditors in its bankruptcy.

The three-judge panel questioned whether the archdiocese needs that entire $60 million to maintain its cemeteries. And one of the jurists, 7th Circuit Judge Ann Claire Williams, said she found issues related to U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa's decision not to recuse himself from the lawsuit over those funds 'troubling.'

The panel — Appellate Judges Williams and Joel Flaum, along with U.S. District Judge Robert Dow of the Northern District of Illinois — heard oral arguments Monday on several issues related to the bankruptcy, including First Amendment questions that could be of national significance as religious liberty cases make their way through courts around the country.

In that lawsuit, filed by Archbishop Jerome Listecki as sole trustee of the cemetery trust, the church maintains that forcing it to turn over even $1 in cemetery funds to the bankruptcy estate would substantially burden its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Proceeds from the estate would go to finance a settlement with sex abuse victims and the archdiocese's reorganization.

Randa is more than troubling.

And Pope Francis could settle this matter in a Vatican minute, if his conversion to decency and humanism were more than a slick PR job.

Lay Catholics face a decision on what to do about the Catholic Church hierarchy, a historic decision.

SNAP - Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

UN Committee Against Torture Summons Vatican on Priests' Sexual Violence

Update: See also U.N. Panel on Torture Presses Vatican Envoy on Abuse (Cumming-Bruce, New York Times):

"In the hearing, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva, immediately found himself at odds with members of the panel, the Committee Against Torture, over the Holy See’s view that it is responsible for applying the treaty only to the few hundred inhabitants of the Vatican City state."

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) reports the Vatican has been summoned to appear to before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to address the torture and rape of children by Catholic priests, covered up by the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Today, the Vatican was summoned to appear before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to report on its record in preventing, punishing and redressing torture, which necessarily included its record addressing widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church.  Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and their attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) were in attendance.  In April, CCR, representing SNAP, filed a report with the Committee documenting the long-term harms suffered by survivors of sexual violence by Catholic clergy, and filed a supplemental report thereafter focusing primarily on Latin America.  This is the second time in four months that top Catholic officials have been called before the U.N. to account for the Vatican’s human rights record on addressing the ongoing worldwide crisis of sexual violence and cover-ups within the Catholic Church.

The next time we read of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York meeting with, and praising Jeb Bush (CBS News), or Sen, Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) running interference for the child rape and molestation scandal in opposition to the Child Victims Act (Bice, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), we should consider why.

The Republican Party and the Catholic Church hierarchy have formed a repulsive alliance out of political and legal necessity.

Dolan, the entire hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee - past and present - should be summoned as well.

Back from Rome, GOP-loving Archbishop Listecki Hits Back Again

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

Annysa Johnson in the MJS notes this morning that, "Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who just returned from a papal meeting in Rome, issued a letter to local Catholics on Tuesday excoriating the media, lawmakers and plaintiffs' attorneys in the bankruptcy."

I could not think of a less credible character than the pederast-protecting, Scott Walker-defending Listecki to excoriate anybody.

Listecki's letter is an outrage in itself referring to the legion of sexual attacks against minors by stating child rape has: “sometimes [been] very badly handled by Church leaders.”

You think?

That's right Listecki, mass rape of children has been badly handled, as in enabled and perpetrated; but Listecki cries out that the Catholic Church is the real victim.

There is no excuse for what happened within the Church. But there is also no excuse for public officials or media to hold the Church to a different standard than other institutions in society.

As a Church, WE voluntarily hold ourselves to a higher standard.

I was not aware of the media or any public official taking up the cause of rapists and sexual assualt perpetrators, except for the Catholic Church.

As Gene Lyons writes in Salon: "In a bankruptcy proceeding [in early February], the diocese of Milwaukee listed 8,000 claims of sexual abuse among its liabilities. I’m with Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce, who writes that the great contraceptive kerfuffle with the Obama administration represents a fairly obvious power play by 'the institutional American church to regain the power and influence in the secular government that it lost when it was exposed to be a multigenerational conspiracy to obstruct justice.'"

To keep up on the higher standards of the Catholic Church, see SNAP, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, working since 1988 to stand up for and help heal the sexually abused. And please check out the video below:


Murder of Our Soul from Farcry Productions on Vimeo.

Archbishop works AGAINST sexually abused children; Gives GOP thumbs-up for averting its gaze

Scott Walker should tell Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki to direct his energy towards helping the children abused and raped by Catholic Church priests. Then he and Sen. Ron Johnson should renounce the Church's crime against humanity, and offer some help.

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki has found the chutzpah to advise Wisconsin about corruption, Scott Walker and the recall.

As Dan Bice writes:

In case you missed it, here is the eight-minute segment in which Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki sits down with WITI-TV (Channel 6) over the weekend to chat about Gov. Scott Walker, the possible recall election and church and politics.

The bottom line: Listecki gives his blessing to Walker but not the recall.

Survivors of the Church are outraged.

SNAP, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests has been working since 1988 to stand up for and help heal the sexually abused. It's mission is clear:

We expose predators and those who shield them. We build policies and practices within secular and religious organizations that protect children now and in the future.

SNAP finds that perpetrators, most infamously the Catholic Church—guilty of nothing less than mass rape and abuse of children—enjoy the company of collaborators covering up the crime, and compounding the crime by becoming the obstacle to healing the trauma of its predatory priests.

WISN reported:

Advocates for the sexually abused ... claimed the move was more about protecting church secrets than about money.

The head of SNAP, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the group is very interested in what will happen during the bankruptcy proceedings.

"The biggest we concern we have about the next step is, kind of much to our amazement, the archdiocese is going to be in court Feb. 9 and their lawyers will try to throw out the vast majority of victims they asked to come forward," said Peter Isely.

The Milwaukee archdiocese is the eighth in the U.S. [out of 32 archdioceses] to seek bankruptcy protection since the scandal in the Catholic Church came to light in 2002.

Now, the Catholic Church hiearchy has consolidated its political alliance with the Republican Party; and the GOP (see Is the Catholic Church Just a Super PAC in Robes?) is not particluar about the company it keeps if it helps the Party acquire power.

But decent people of Wisconsin should stand up for the betrayed children and demand accoutability from Listecki no matter how deeply into the black hole of nihilism the Church has veered. In return for averting its eyes from the Church's sins committed onto children and women, the GOP is assisting the Church's political maneuver stating repeatedly that President Obama is at war with religion, and blocking bills protecting children.

As Jimmy Breslin writes in his The Church That Forgot Christ (Simon and Schuster, 2004), after leaving the Catholic Church in disgust:

I know one thing. [Former Head of the Bishops Conference William D.] Gregory's church history cannot stand the light of a heavy candle. I issue mine [estimate of abused children] after doing what he and his bishops don't know how to do: walk the streets of the parishes and listen to Catholics who, slowly, reluctantly, but so surely, tell of atrocities by priests on the young.

If the desperate Catholic Church wants to dive further into American politics, so be it; the United States is often a free country.

But the Catholic Church—as the misogynistic and child-rapist protection racket that it has become—and its collaborators like Scott Walker, Ron Johnson and the Republican Party need to look into their conscience and stop, not make worse, the trauma that 100,000s of human beings carry with them until they die.