Creepy Priest and a Church with Creepy Priorities, The Pharyngula, February 3, 2011

Creepy Priest and a Church with Creepy Priorities

The Pharyngula
February 3, 2011

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/creepy_priest_and_a_church_wit.php

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Thomas Euteneuer was an up-and-coming star of the Catholic priesthood: he was a charismatic fellow who appeared on radio and TV and other media to fight for the dogmatic Catholic position on just about everything. He was a crusader against homosexuality, against sex outside of marriage, against contraceptives, against abortion. He was also an official Catholic exorcist, which tells you right there that he was batty all the way through.

But then he was suddenly dismissed from his position on the board of an anti-abortion group, stepped down from one diocese and was transferred to another, and went quiet. There was a conspiracy of silence to keep his crimes, whatever they were, hidden away. That has changed recently, thanks to constant pressure from many angry Catholics, and a few statements have emerged from the church and from Euteneuer himself. They don't clarify much, and in fact leave me even more curious.

What we know is that whatever Euteneuer did, it was dire — you can rape children in the church and the wheels of Catholic justice turn slowly, but Euteneuer did something that got him whisked out of the public eye surprisingly abruptly.

Whatever it was, it had something to do with his job as an exorcist.

The circumstances that led to my departure from HLI were related exclusively to my own decisions and conduct within the ministry of exorcism that I carried out independently from my responsibilities at HLI.

Hmmm. Curious. Even curiouser, his crime was sexual.

My violations of chastity were limited to one person only, an adult woman;

The violations of chastity happened due to human weakness but did not involve the sexual act;

We also have some other accounts that suggest these events occurred multiple times.

Father [reportedly] admitted to having 'an inappropriate relationship' with an employee in his letter of resignation [and] a second woman [apparently] came forward to say that Father had engaged in sexual activity with her — not intercourse, but close to it — while he was performing some type of exorcism prayer(s).

Catholic prayers must be kinkier than I ever imagined. I admit it, I do have a somewhat dirty mind, but looking at that list of admissions, I am totally stumped about what Euteneuer actually did … which is actually amplifying my imagined creepiness of whatever it was. I'd speculate further except that there is a victim involved: as much as Euteneuer may deserve some contempt, the victim deserves some respect.

Which brings me to the really weird part. Everything I'm reading about this situation contains these insistent declarations that the act involved an ADULT! WOMAN! Even the Catholic bishop's statement about the case emphasizes this.

Euteneuer has been undergoing intensive evaluation and counseling to address admitted inappropriate crossing of adult heterosexual boundaries on the occasion of carrying out his priestly ministry.

See? ADULT! and HETEROSEXUAL!

This bugs me. It's like they're saying, "At least it wasn't gay sex, and it didn't involve a child." They're trying to reduce the magnitude of whatever perversity was committed. And it's as if they're reassuring everyone that it wasn't that awful homosexuality was committed.

And weirdest of all, it's as if they're saying that because a woman was the victim, it wasn't so bad. Women are the designated victims; oh, sure, it's not good that he was abusing a woman, but it would have been even worse if a man was hurt.

And then there are the people rushing to defend this priest…by attacking the victims.

I think these women are shameful. Their attack will probably backfire on them. They are possessed with evil and it seems that they are getting worse whenever someone disagrees with them. They seem very vindictive in character and self righteous. They don't seem credible to me.

I have known Fr. Tom personally for more than 13 years and I can assure you of Father's devotion to the unborn. I have never seen him falter in his ministry as a priest. Being exposed to demons is not an easy thing. Sometimes the demons will purposely twist the bodies of their victims that will have their sexual parts touch the one who is trying to remove the demons. This, I am sure must have happened several times to Father Tom. Many of the women who are possessed also have other mental problems like ADHD and Bi-polar and these people lie very often just to get attention.

Even when the church acts quickly to stop a predatory priest, they just can't do it right. It's all those demon women and their wicked ways.