Sunday Sermon

Sunday morning coming down!!

My sermon for this Sunday is abuse by the church.

These types of things, and especially the Roman Catholic Church covering up, are what really bother me.

It is interesting how people who don't attend church are looked upon as heathens, but the truth be known, that is better than being a hypocrite.




L.A. archdiocese to settle 45 sex abuse cases

Largest Roman Catholic unit in U.S. to pay $60 million; 22 priests involved

LOS ANGELES - The nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese said Friday it has agreed to pay $60 million to settle 45 lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests.

The deal is the most significant step to date toward resolving extensive litigation against the archdiocese that has dragged on for years.

“I pray that the settlement of the initial group of cases will help the victims involved to move forward with their lives and to build a brighter future for themselves and their families,” Cardinal Roger Mahony said in a news release.

Negotiations for the settlement of the uninsured cases have been in progress for at least a year.

Ray Boucher, the lead plaintiff’s attorney, said the settlement involved 22 priests and was the largest settlement the Los Angeles archdiocese had reached “by far.” He said more than $50 million would come from the archdiocese and about $8 million from religious orders.

“I wasn’t certain we would ever get it done, but thankfully 45 very injured people will have a chance to begin to heal, particularly at this time of the year,” he said.

The Los Angeles archdiocese still faces more than 500 lawsuits from people who allege they were abused by about 200 priests and laypeople dating as far back as the 1930s.

Second-largest payout in state
The payout is the second-largest in California, behind the Diocese of Orange’s 2004 agreement to spend $100 million to settle 90 abuse claims. It is also the fourth-largest in the nation since the clergy abuse crisis erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002, according to an Associated Press review.

Sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church at least $1.5 billion since 1950. Several American dioceses have reached multimillion-dollar settlements with victims in the past few years, as bishops have tried to resolve the crisis and move on.

Four dioceses — Tucson, Ariz., Spokane, Wash., Portland, Ore., and Davenport, Iowa — sought bankruptcy protection from a flood of lawsuits. Tucson has emerged from the process.

Settlement talks have been under way in the remaining California cases since 2002, when legislators passed a state law that suspended for one year the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims.

Nearly 1,000 people filed claims against the Roman Catholic Church in California under that law.

I have reported on abuses of the Catholic Church in prior posts on my blog. I have also stated the Church was fully aware and covered it up.

Did you read real close, "dating as far back as the 1930s"? How many of the Popes and Cardinals were a part of this?

Sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church at least $1.5 billion since 1950. “I pray that the settlement of the initial group of cases will help the victims involved to move forward with their lives and to build a brighter future for themselves and their families,” Cardinal Roger Mahony said in a news release.

I hate to burst Cardinal Mahony's bubble, but money does not absolve the church or heal the victims.

Then there are the Roman Catholic Churches that declared bankruptcy:

Four dioceses — Tucson, Ariz., Spokane, Wash., Portland, Ore., and Davenport, Iowa — sought bankruptcy protection from a flood of lawsuits. Tucson has emerged from the process.

The richest church in the world and some of them can declare bankruptcy to avoid paying.

And now brothers and sisters, let us pass the collection plate and please give generously!!





Second man accuses Foley priest of sex abuse

40-year-old ex-altar boy plans to file lawsuit against Archdiocese of Miami

MIAMI - Another former altar boy says he was sexually abused in the 1970s by the same retired Catholic priest who acknowledged fondling former Rep. Mark Foley when Foley was a teenager, the man’s attorney said Wednesday.

The new allegations against the Rev. Anthony Mercieca were made by a man who lived in North Miami and was an altar boy at St. James Catholic Church, where Mercieca worked, attorney Jeffrey Herman said.

Herman said he planned to file a lawsuit Wednesday against the Archdiocese of Miami. His client, now 40 and identified in the lawsuit only as John Doe No. 26, says Mercieca abused him when he was about 12 years old.

“He had been thinking about it before Foley came forward, and then when Foley came out and the church encouraged other victims to come forward, he decided to come forward,” Herman said.

The man said “all of my nightmares came back” when Mercieca’s picture appeared on the news last week amid Foley’s claims that the priest had molested him. Foley had resigned amid accusations that he sent sexually explicit messages to teenage boys who had worked on Capitol Hill.

Mercieca, 69, now lives on the Maltese island of Gozo in the Mediterranean. No one answered the phone at his home Wednesday. His lawyer, Alfred Grech, did not return calls to his cell phone.

'No information to indicate' abuse
Archdiocese of Miami spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta, asked about the latest allegations, said: “Any of this type of behavior by Father Mercieca was unknown to the archdiocese and we had absolutely no information to indicate that the father did or would engage in any type of inappropriate or abusive behavior.”

The Miami Archdiocese barred Mercieca from all church work as it investigates Foley’s claim that the clergyman molested him when Foley was an altar boy at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967.

Mercieca is now retired and does not serve in any parish, but he regularly celebrates Mass and hears confession in the cathedral on Gozo, according to the Archdiocese of Malta.

In multiple interviews last week, Mercieca denied having sexual intercourse with Foley, but he did acknowledge being nude with him when Foley was a boy.

Mercieca also denied having sex with any underage children.

Herman said his client and Mercieca took a bicycle ride together one day after altar boy practice and then returned to the church where the abuse occurred.

“It was fondling and he performed oral sex on the boy,” Herman said. “He attempted on another occasion following altar boy practice, but the boy declined to go on this bike ride and he never went back to the church after that.”

Mercieca served as an assistant pastor at the church from 1975 to 1985, according to church records.

More denial. Archdiocese of Miami spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta, asked about the latest allegations, said: “Any of this type of behavior by Father Mercieca was unknown to the archdiocese and we had absolutely no information to indicate that the father did or would engage in any type of inappropriate or abusive behavior.” Right, pull the covers over your heads!!

I now have a better understanding of the confessional in Catholic Church:

Parishioner: Forgive me Father for I have sinned.
Priest: Well I molested children today. Is your sin worse?
Parishioner: No.
Priest: Then you are forgiven. Go in peace. See me next week so we can compare notes!!





Ex-pastor jailed for running off with teen girl

54-year-old will serve 11 years in federal prison, 9 years in N.Y. prison

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - A former Baptist pastor who disappeared with a 15-year-old girl for a month and later pleaded guilty to raping her was sentenced Friday to more than 11 years in federal prison.

Lewis Lee, 54, admitted in May to four federal charges, including crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. In August, he was sentenced to 9 1/3 to 28 years in state prison after pleading guilty to seven counts of third-degree rape.

Lee will serve 11 years and three months in a federal prison and then the remainder of his time in state prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas McAvoy also ordered Lee to be supervised by authorities for 25 years after his release.

“Mr. Lee you have gone a long way to destroy the lives of the victim and her family. It is beyond my power to describe how heinous this crime is,” McAvoy said.

The judge said he had little faith Lee could be rehabilitated in prison.

Lee was ordered to pay nearly $67,000 in restitution to cover the cost of mental health treatments for the girl and for some of the income the family’s farm lost while the family searched for the teen.

‘This has been like living a nightmare’
At the sentencing, the victim’s mother said Lee, their pastor and friend, “betrayed” them, and described the family’s ordeal.

“This has been like living a nightmare ... but I never wake up, and it never goes away,” she said.

The mother said her once-cheerful daughter has been left “confused, hurt and angry.”

Lee, who is married, had been the girl’s pastor at Christian Baptist Church in the central New York town of Sherburne before the two disappeared in mid-March from her family’s dairy farm. The girl left willingly, but the state’s legal age of consent is 17.

The pair set off a nationwide search, traveling as far west as Wyoming before Lee was arrested in April in Hagerstown, Md.

Different faith, same type of problem - more kids whose lives have been shattered by abuse of power.

There is a web site you can access that will list where pedophiles live in your neighborhood. I wonder how many Churches are shown on the site?

May God bless the victims and may God Damn the perpetrators!!!!



These types of things are what have contributed to the moral decay in the United States my friends.

Our country will destroy itself from within.

Join me tomorrow for a story from a guest author.