Paul St. Charles, the PPP

Here he is!  The PPP, preferred pedophile priest, Paul St. Charles.

By the way, does this look like a bishop who gets it? Bishop Choby is awarding St. Charles the "Golden Grad Award" from Father Ryan.  Sure, you get it for just being alive, but how many boys has he killed in his life?  Killing their souls, killing their futures, killing their dreams, wounding their psyches, mangling their hope for a peaceful life. 

Looks to me like they would have given him a jail sentence after what he has done to youth.  After all, that is what your ordinary, run-of-the-mill pedophile gets.  Ask Bishop Steib of Memphis what the files says about the abuse by the PPP. Ask the courts who are still hearing his abuse cases if he is innocent as his legion of followers say. 

Bishop Choby, you deserve an award.  Let's see . . what should we call that award?  Something with alliteration.  Well, maybe we can come up with this soon in another post.  I'll try to think of some words that I could actually post without having my blog removed for "ugly words" (if you know what I mean.)

Crumbs of cooperation

The Catholic church is so fond of saying that they are now fully cooperative and transparent. Funny thing, transparency. It's hard to attain when you won't release the names of the pedophile priests who have been assigned in your diocese. This is a brick wall if anything, and is just about as transparent as a dark starless night in the dessert.

Names of 18 priests across Tennessee were turned into the now famous John Jay Study at the turn of the millennium. Someone please comment to this post and send me the names. I have asked for 7 years and have never gotten them. (The pathetic excuses the church has given me is the subject of a future blog.)

Do you know who these pedophiles are? Do you know where they were assigned?

Me either. . . except what victims have told me. My mental list is lengthy, and the details gruesome.

But officially, no one knows, and clearly, that is wrong. The church would be guilty of malfeasance and obstruction of justice if it were a secular institution. But since it is "the church" it gets a pass on the truth. Even the justice system seems reluctant to hold it to the same standards as the rest of us.

Crumbs of cooperation. That's what we get. Nothing more. Nothing to sustain our lives, these crumbs that so many accept as enough.

Make a difference. Tell your pastor that you will not give a dime to the collection basket until you get full accountability about these pedophiles. That's what will work. Withhold the money; get the information. Good clear-cut plan. . . if we could only get together and execute the plan.

Question - did Paul St. Charles abuse at SHC?

I have one question that needs to be asked . . . and answered.

Did Father Paul St. Charles spend a year at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville, Tennessee? Public records say that he was there around 1967-1968.

Do the people of Sacred Heart Cathedral (and the rest of the diocese of Knoxville) know that Paul St. Charles is a pedophile priest? That he has been credibly accused by the diocese of Memphis? That he still lives in Nashville after his early retirement from the priesthood in the 1970s? That multiple lawsuits have been filed against him? That more and more men tell one horrific story after another about the hideous abuse by Paul St. Charles? That Bishop Choby of Nashville protects Paul St. Charles from the truth?

What does Paul St. Charles know that he is being protected by the THREE dioceses from exposure of his crimes?

Oops. That was more than one question. Well one question about the perverse secrets in the diocese of Knoxville leads to another. . . and another . . . and another.

KCHS class of 1968 - a get-together

I just had my 40th class reunion at Knoxville Catholic High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was a wonderful experience. After 40 years, some of the pretensions that we all had have dropped away, and we find ourselves surprisingly more in tune with each other than we ever were 40 years ago.

I was happy to see so much happiness and genuine care among my classmates and friends. It has warmed my heart like nothing else in a long time.

I wish everyone could have this experience. Sadly, too many who went to KCHS have to contend with the damaging, devastating effects of clergy sexual abuse.

Many of my classmates know that I have worked with clergy sexual abuse victims. I had decided to be candid about it with them, since I also think frankness and candor are benefits of the 40 years after high school!

Many of them had the usual reaction that it happened to someone else and not to those who went to KCHS. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I only had to point to the yearbooks on display from our four years at Catholic. There are pictures of at least two serial child molesters in those pages. TWO pedophile priests that I am aware of, and there are most likely more.

Not pictured in the books are two other priest predators who were assigned to churches where our classmates came from to go to KCHS. All of us were exposed to these predators in some way and did not know it. Or are there classmates of mine and students from other classes who were abused by these priests?

I suspect the answer is yes given all that I do know about the clergy sexual abuse crisis in East Tennessee, a crisis yet to fully erupt, but one that some of us know to be horrific.

Thanks, class of 1968. I love all of you, and I fervently hope we will meet again before too many years go by. By then, I hope the entire Diocese of Knoxville is exposed for the cover-up and corruption that it has perpetrated on too many of the innocents.

An Irish Tragedy by Joe Rigert

There is a new book, An Irish Tragedy, by Joe Rigert that has two chapters dedicated to the topic of the infamous and somewhat banished first bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, Anthony J. O'Connell.

I am looking forward to reading this book and am especially interested in the part on O'Connell. There is so much left unknown and unsaid about O'Connell. My greatest fear is that we will forget about him to the point that he will drift off to Europe and become a renowned leader of a basilica or cathedral or other edifice of note.

After all Cardinal Bernard Law, his best buddy forever, was rightly humiliated in Boston and then went to Europe to become the potentate of a huge church in Rome. What a punishment! Talk about the ultimate "getting bumped upstairs" situation.

I am so afraid that O'Connell will trade his peaceful, posh, carefree existence at Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, for an equally posh existence in Rome or Ireland or some other unsuspecting region of the world.

He deserves jail. He gets comfort. Not fair at all.