By Kay Ebeling
City of Angels
January 19, 2009
http://cityofangels5.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-maine-bishop-needed-police-escort.html
We also had a lot of response after the January 5th post: "What made me laugh out loud in the Fact Sheet about Paul Kendrick and Bishop Malone." People sent cartoons with inebriated Irish priests, and what I think is a legitimate question. On that night when the cleric called for a police escort, citing the threat of priest sex crime survivors and their advocates in the
crowd, why was Bishop Malone meeting with survivors in a bar in the first place?
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"Oh you California people are such prudes," Paul Kellen of Boston joked, answering me. "The bishop proclaimed a program Theology on Tap." So I looked it up and it's true, for the last 20 years or so, priests all over the country have been going out to spread the word of the church in local bars and taverns.
"This was at the same time Malone was refusing to meet with (survivor) Marie Tupper," Kellen said, "So Paul Kendrick, Mike Sweatt, and Marie stood outside. Paul Kendrick had a video camera with him, because they hadn't called any reporters. He wanted to document the event, not just rely on the bishop's word."
Apparently alarmed, Bishop Richard Malone of Portland, Maine, got a staffer to get on a cell phone and call for a police escort, a judgment call which methinks shows he probably tippled a few beforehand to get prepared for Theology on Tap that night. In fact, when I found out about Theology on Tap, I saw a religion on its last legs, desperately trying to find a way to keep itself from going under.
Tell the truth. Then parishioners will come back. You don't have to go out to bars to find them.
At Malone's meeting "His spokeswoman got up and said they were harassing the bishop and peppering him with questions," Kellen related. "It turns out, according to the video Paul Kendrick made, Marie Tupper asked one question to which she got a short response and then Malone walked into the bar."
The Catholic News Agency reported on a Bishop Richard Malone inevitably inebriated Bible study session in a July 2005 article http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=4460
"Malone cited the literature of Flannery O'Connor and James Joyce and the theories of Sigmund Freud in addressing the modern problems of the Catholic Church"--
I'll bet he did.
The more drunk he got the more drivel came out, brutalized recitations of esoteric poetry, and then in the the famous words of Sigmund Freud-
You're darn right, I'm a prude.
This is an excuse to go out and get drunk while you are being a priest.
Along much the same pattern
As priests going out in collar to visit mothers, coming over each night to aid her in her selfless efforts
- by tucking in her little boys and finger banging them.
The beer mugs, the shots, the more he sips the looser the lips and Did I tell ever you, in the verrry words of what Signmund Freud him shelf said, him sself shed, him, oh what the heck have another one on the archdiocese, ha-ha-ha. . .
"It is a casual forum where young adults can gather together and have 'straight talk, hard facts, and real answers' about our faith and how it applies to daily life," reads a flyer from Maine's "Greater Portland Young Adult Ministry" advertising Theology on Tap 2005.
Priests going out acting like priests so they can satisfy their compulsions and still look holy. . .
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Who can believe anything these priests say ?
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"When they arrived the owner of the bar came out and said he didn't want us there," Kellen told me. "They said it's not going to be a problem it's a public sidewalk, but apparently then the bishop called and got himself a police escort.
"They had a woman police officer walk with him down the sidewalk."
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The Chicago Archdiocese is a big promoter of Theology on Tap, in fact, I found this tidbit of information:
"Kate DeVries works for the Archdiocese of Chicago as associate director of the Young Adult Ministry Office. Cities seeking to start an official Theology on Tap program must contact DeVries and adhere to the model provided by her office.
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(Hmm, sounds a little bit like a SNAP support group meeting.)
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I finished work last week, took out the disk and the TV returned to cable, Comedy Central, where comic:
Alonzo Bodden
Was doing standup, saying:
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"About the Catholic Church coming out against gay marriage?
I'm thinking don't you guys have some problems of your own to work out. Because I don't know how it's going to work when judgment day comes, but if it's anything at all like the DMV with those lines, depending on what you did, I'd rather be in the gay people getting married line than in the I touch little boys line."
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The Story Goes Onward. . .
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