TRANSCRIPT
In the past two or three months, which also happens to coincide with the Washington, D.C., press conference sponsored by the Deposit of Faith Coalition (of which Church Militant is a part), the conservative media spotlight is now shining ever more brightly on the U.S. bishops and their role in the exploitation of minors at the border.
For Catholics who understand, exploiting minors is something the U.S. hierarchy and its staffers have excelled at for decades.
One such example is an excellent article from the Christian Review last week, which blasts the USCCB. Allow us to quote a very small portion from the publication, whose title is “Are the U.S. Bishops Covering Up Child Exploitation Again?” Note the “again” part, which sets the tone right out of the gate.
Choice quotes from the article are as follows:
“Have any of the children cared for by the Church suffered exploitation in their journey to the border or in placements facilitated by the Catholic Church, I asked. The USCCB refused to respond”
“The USCCB’s lack of transparency is unacceptable. Mounting evidence has exposed gross exploitation of children at the border. The USCCB remains the primary institutional voice opposing border restrictions, while also contracting to provide care to unaccompanied children”
“In 2020 and 2021, the USCCB had contracts for nearly $25,000,000 each year to care for and place migrant children. What happened to these children and why won’t the USCCB discuss it?”
You would think that after the sex abuse scandals of the past 70 years, the billions paid out by the bishops in secret settlement agreements, the bankrupting now of almost three dozen dioceses (and counting) to avoid having to pay any more, not to mention the wrecked lives of the children (mostly boys), the suicides, the drug addictions, the nightmares, that after all that, the scoundrels in miters would have learned a lesson. But no.
There’s just too much money in it for them to care about the kids — way too much money. In fact, the total amount of money the U.S. bishops draw down from federal, state, county and municipal governments is in excess of a billion dollars.
A large chunk of that funnels to so-called Catholic Charities, which is neither Catholic nor very charitable.
In 2002, the neglect and complicity of the U.S. bishop in the gay-clergy sex abuse scandal was finally brought to light by Boston Globe’s nearly year-long exposé. What that series of prize-winning reports revealed was that much of the hierarchy are downright sinister sociopaths who hide behind the Church.
Then, after calling the Dallas Charter to “fix” the problem, nothing changed. A great show was put on for the media, but, eventually, the truth came out again. The very men behind the Dallas Charter, especially former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, were themselves abusers. They had just conveniently drafted the charter to exclude bishops from any accountability.
That all came crashing down in 2018 when it came out, again through legal action, that McCarrick was the most notorious abuser perhaps in Church history.
But once again, the bishops circled the wagons, protected themselves, and zero discussion was allowed about the entire network of prelates who knew and protected the powerful cardinal, or at least looked the other way. More than five years later, not one bishop who knew about it (and there were dozens and dozens) has been turned out of office.
The problem isn’t the rules or guidelines or canon law or even the evil; the problem is the men in charge. They don’t really see this as a life-destroying evil; they see it as a legal and public relations problem. Sex abuse is bad because of the black eye we get, not because it is a monstrous evil in and of itself.
So now fast-forward to the latest chapter of the bishops involved in exploiting children, only, this time, the children have been placed directly in their “care” by a monstrous child-killing government that is perfectly content to have children suffer, to advance its communist-driven agenda of destroying the republic.
And the bishops make billions from that same government leviathan. What they have had to pay out for the sex abuse scandal, they have easily refilled their coffers with tax dollars, with no end in sight.
Something needs to be done about this, and Church Militant is leading the charge with regard to it, at least among concerned Catholics. We don’t want to tip our hand just yet, but stay tuned. There’s much more to come.
