The top-left is the late Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex-offender who was the nexus point for many elite celebrities before his death. The top-right is Former-Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick, a convicted sex-offender who was also the nexus point for many elite bishops before he was laicized. There are many commonalities between the two criminals besides child-abuse.
The crossover we are going to discuss today is something I label “Diversionary Scapegoating.” Diversionary Scapegoating is when a delinquent group conveniently blames all of its crimes on one person (a criminal already busted) so as to divert the public’s eyes from the criminal activity of that very same group. In regards to the top-left, that group is US celebrities. The elite and the mainstream media are now willing to admit that Jeffrey Epstein was a very bad man. Now MSNBC looks concerned about child-abuse. (Slow-clap, slow clap.) How convenient their scapegoat for so many crimes is dead.
But the Catholic hierarchy and mainstream Catholic media is just as guilty. The US bishops and mainstream Catholic media now openly attack Cardinal McCarrick, but not before the New York Times brought the whole story of his child-abuse public in 2018. By that point, many Catholic bishops on the East Coast had already known that McCarrick was a child-predator. Before 2018, the bishops didn’t report McCarrick’s abuse of children. After 2018, it was permitted to openly discuss him as a criminal. What changed? McCarrick became a lost-cause in public-relations. That way (scapegoating him as the only problem) slimy bishops could then pretend like they cared about stopping child-abuse.
But this was to divert public attention from themselves as similar criminals. That kingpin of child-molestation (McCarrick) was taken out. Thus, it became easy for his fellow criminals to pretend like the episcopal-rot began and ended with him. Diversionary Scapegoating means getting the good laity off the trail of sniffing out other bad clergy. In other words, when the USCCB or CNA demonized McCarrick, it made them look like angels who cared. (For example, a few years ago, CNA began a podcast by highlighting how quick they were in covering the McCarrick scandal, but it was only after the secular NYT reported the abuse that they started their podcast on him. Slow-clap for CNA, slow-clap.)
You see, McCarrick wasn’t the only bishop molesting children. The USCCB and mainstream Catholic media both know this. In fact, probably every diocese in the US is under-reporting their known-stats of priest-child scandals. Msgr. Gene Gomulka, a former priest of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, has published thousands of pages on guilty priests and bishops who have molested children or covered for them. But the mainstream Catholic media purposely ignore Msgr. Gomulka and all of his reports.
In 2001, the Boston Globe “Spotlight” series was ready to publish the report on hundreds of priests and brothers in the Archdiocese of Boston who were moved repeatedly after molesting children. Because of the 9/11 attacks, the Globe had to delay the release of the scandal exposé until 2002. But then, following the 2002 “Spotlight” release, we heard numerous bishops crying so much how sorry they were. Boo-hoo. They all promised this would never happen again, and that they would release all the files for the lay folks to study. They lied. And we will see proof of this later in the article.
That year, in 2002, the John-Jay Report made all dioceses tell how many credible cases of priest-child scandals were in every diocese for the past 52 years. My friend Msgr. Gomulka reports that in his former diocese (the Archdiocese for the Military Services) the hierarchy claimed that from 1950 to 2002, there were only two cases of priest-child scandals. However, Gomulka ultimately proves the number is around 500. Yes, that is an under-reporting of 2500% of molestation-accounts of priests on US military bases. We have reason to believe this criminal underreporting happens in every diocese. Look at the gross diocesan-underreporting of clergy-abuse cases as exposed by the Attorney General in Illinois or the Grand-Jury Investigation in Pennsylvania. These aren’t just numbers. You can see the adult-survivor of priest-child abuse describe a diocesan cover-up in this video (caution: bad language.)
But isn’t this because the mainstream media like the AP is liberal and hate the Catholic Church? No. Msgr. Gomulka loves the Church very much and he is conservative. Gomulka reveals here in his public letter that cover-ups in the Archdiocese for Military Services has lasted a very long time. Gomulka (admittedly a priest who left ministry and got civilly married and had children but was never laicized) shows in his files how deep this rot of cover-up goes.
The correlation in his evidence is undeniable on this predation. Gomulka also wrote an article at Complicit Clergy revealing the multiple layers of complex cover-ups in the American hierarchy. No, the bad priests did not “go away in the 1980s,” like many conservative lay folks today desperately want to believe.
For example, this past month, a 69 year old man asked to meet me to tell me about a scandal. I usually don’t meet with people like this, but we had a common friend, so I obliged. The three of us met up. The 69 year old, who we will call Steve, recently wrote a book about how his pastor was secretly molesting many altar boys at their parish. That predatory priest would do the Novus Ordo (new Mass in English) and TLM (Traditional Latin Mass.) Shamefully, I knew that predatory priest in real life, but I did not know he was a criminal at the time.
In Steve’s book, he reveals how he received evidence of sexual assault against children from over ten families before going to the diocese to report the priest’s crimes. When he went to the chancery, the former Vicar for Clergy told him: “I don’t hear this from anyone except you. You are the problem at that parish, not the priest.”
In other words, this “really conservative” diocese covered for sexual-assault against children.
Amazingly, Steve was not reporting these crimes to the diocese in the 1970s, but rather he was reporting it in the 2000s. And it turns out Steve was right: Over ten families have won lawsuits against the diocese due to this one priest. Steve (the man I recently had dinner with) is slated to testify in yet another abuse case against the priest. (This is one reason I keep his name anonymous in this article.) One of the reasons I know Steve is telling the truth is because I googled the priest and the name of one of his victims as reported to me by Steve. It turns out that young boy was sexually assaulted 60 times by the violent priest. Both Steve’s book and the mainstream media give the exact same number: 60x…. And that young boy was only one of many victims abused by him.
After much research, Steve and I now believe the diocese is hiding certain crimes of other predatory priests. I believe the hierarchy’s cover-up is easy because innocent families who had a child-victim of clergy-abuse feel they must sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and/or they fail to win lawsuits due to statutes of limitations. Also, most victims of clergy-abuse do not come forward until they are adults.
Both of those legal aspects (NDAs and statutes) essentially help dioceses to refrain from ever coming clean on most abuse cases to their average laity in the pews. Don’t blame the victims for these NDAs. Think about it. You have two options if your son was molested by a priest: EITHER 1) Embarrass your own family and get called “a liar” by the diocese and then maybe walk away with $10,000 –OR– 2) Get $1M while not embarrassing your family in signing an NDA which protects the diocese from the media. That is why NDAs are essentially gag-orders against victims’ families. This helps dioceses hide cases of predator-priests from the public. Many such perverts even stay in active ministry for a while after their crimes are reported to the diocese.
Equal in wickedness to the molesting priests is the deflecting bishops. I suspect every diocese in the United States that claims to have released all cases of clergy-abuse is underreporting by upwards of 10x. Why? Because many of the people working in even “conservative” chanceries are compromised themselves. Their diocesan civil attorneys got the victims’ families to sign NDAs as essential gag orders. So don’t be surprised if these “really conservative bishops” tell you how disgusted they are at the criminal behavior of former-Cardinal McCarrick.
Don’t buy it. McCarrick is an easy scapegoat for criminals who pretend like they care about protecting children. Again, this is why I coined the term Diversionary Scapegoating—bishops scapegoating one major hierarchical criminal simply to divert lay-eyes from their own clerical crimes. That way, they sound like they care.
But practically, why am I writing this? So that you might know it’s still not safe (after all these years) to entrust your children to priests (unless you have overwhelming evidence he is a normal man without trying to be “relevant” to your family.) But more importantly, I write this so that you know that when your bishop tells you he has released all the names of the predator-priests, you know he is lying—at least in the vast majority of dioceses. And this is true coast-to-coast, even if your bishop likes to occasionally rip on McCarrick. It’s probably to shake you off his own trail.