CHILD SEX ABUSE: CATHOLIC CHURCH TELLS BISHOPS THEY ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO REPORT OR DISCLOSE INCIDENTS

Catholic Church tells bishops they are not obliged to disclose child sex abuse 

UPDATE: Church denies

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/02/catholic-church-tells-bishops-they-are-not-obliged-to-disclose-child-sex-abuse; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

UPDATE: This report has a Vatican official claiming that Tony Anatrella didn’t mean what is being reported. That may be. But that he wrote it at all, after the Church has amassed such a terrible record regarding abuse cases, does not bode well.

This is not an off-topic post. We have seen the thorough corruption of the bishops before: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops received $79,590,512 in 2014 alone — that’s right, nearly 80 million dollars — from the federal government for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration Fund. The bishops are actively encouraging the entry of Muslim migrants, among whom there will be an untold number of active jihad terrorists, into the U.S.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched a National Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, partnering with groups linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Catholic bishops in the U.S. and elsewhere are silent about Muslim persecution of Christians, and boycott and silence those who dare to tell the truth about that persecution.

And now these two news items below. The level of corruption and moral outrage is off the charts. These are men who claim to be moral arbiters but who have completely lost their moral compass.

“Catholic Church Tells Bishops They Are Not Obliged to Disclose Child Sex Abuse: Report,” by Rishi Iyengar, Time, February 11, 2016:

Report says the church has told prelates that decision should be made by the victims and their families

The Catholic Church is allegedly telling newly ordained bishops that they have no obligation to report child-sexual-abuse allegations to law-enforcement officials, saying instead that the decision to take such claims to the authorities should be left to victims and their families.

The policy was first reported by a veteran Vatican journalist at Catholic news website Crux, who cited a presentation given by French Monsignor Tony Anatrella.

Anatrella, a consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, also authored a training document for new bishops released by Church authorities last week, in which similar guidelines are laid out.

“According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds,” his document states, according to a citation in the Guardian….

And then there’s John Feit, a priest who murdered a woman. His superiors knew about it, and instead of reporting him to police, moved him around and covered up the crime: “Ex-Priest Is Arrested in 1960 Killing of Texas Beauty Queen,” by Fernanda Santos, New York Times, February 11, 2016:

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — She had a disarming combination of beauty and intelligence and, in her short life, amassed a collection of accomplishments and firsts: first Hispanic twirler at a majority-Anglo high school on the Texas-Mexico border, first in her family to go to college, homecoming queen and, in 1958, Miss All South Texas Sweetheart.

Irene Garza, 25, was working as a grade-school teacher when she was killed 56 years ago, asphyxiated, an autopsy revealed, and then dumped in an irrigation canal. She was last seen at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Tex., her hometown parish, where she had planned to go to confession ahead of Easter Sunday.

On Tuesday, Texas Rangers and McAllen police officers arrested the parish’s visiting priest at the time — now an octogenarian — who had been living quietly in a condominium complex here. His name is John Feit, and through the years, he has remained the sole suspect in Ms. Garza’s killing.

Mr. Feit, 83, shuffled with his walker along the linoleum floor at the Fourth Avenue Jail in Phoenix on Wednesday, anchored his stooped body behind a desk and addressed Commissioner Paula Williams of Maricopa County Superior Court, who was presiding over his initial court appearance on closed-circuit television.

“This whole thing makes no sense, because the crime in question took place in 1960,” Mr. Feit said, sounding hoarse and tired.

“There’s no statute of limitations on that sort of crime,” the commissioner replied.

Mr. Feit’s arrest in what is perhaps the most memorable cold case in recent history in Hidalgo County came about through a mix of patience, persistence and political ambition. As suspicions against Mr. Feit mounted, the Roman Catholic Church moved him to a monastery in the tiny Missouri town of Ava, and from there to a home for troubled priests in tinier Jemez Springs, N.M.…

When Ms. Garza disappeared, the police chalked it up to a case of a pretty young woman who had run off with a lover and fled the confining rules of her fervently Catholic family. Two days later, a passer-by found one of her high-heeled shoes on a road on the edge of McAllen, which sits across from Reynosa, Mexico. The next morning, someone found her purse.

By midweek, her body surfaced in the canal. Divers drained its waters, recovering a clunky slide viewer with a long black cord that the police presumed had been tied to Ms. Garza’s corpse so it would sink to the canal’s muddy bottom.

The slide viewer belonged to Mr. Feit.

Already, the young priest had admitted to hearing Ms. Garza’s confession, saying he had done so in the privacy of the rectory. And the parish’s priest, the Rev. Joseph O’Brien, told investigators that he noticed fresh scratches on Mr. Feit’s hands when they had coffee late that night….

But at Assumption Abbey in Ava, a Trappist monk named Dale Tacheny — who, as a novice master, served as coach and spiritual counselor to new arrivals — heard a different story.

In an interview, Mr. Tacheny, who is no longer a monk, recalled that the abbot had told him that Mr. Feit “had killed someone” and asked him to see if Mr. Feit “had the vocation to become a monk.” It soon became clear he did not.

“He told me he didn’t feel comfortable there — he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in that environment,” Mr. Tacheny said.

According to Mr. Tacheny, Mr. Feit confided in him that he had killed a young woman in Texas; Mr. Tacheny never asked her name or pressed him for any details. His role, he said, was to prepare Mr. Feit for life outside the monastery, to “help him to be in control of himself.”

Mr. Feit had also spoken about hurting another woman in Hidalgo County, Mr. Tacheny recalled. Detectives had already matched his description to that given by a woman who had been attacked inside a Catholic church on the outskirts of McAllen weeks before Ms. Garza’s killing — a white man with horn-rimmed glasses just like those Mr. Feit wore. Eventually, Mr. Feit pleaded no contest to charges of aggravated assault and paid a $500 fine, but he served no jail time.…