The Legacy of St. John Paul II: This Is Leadership?!

By William D. Lindsey
Bilgrimage
April 27, 2014

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From the very start of his tenure as archbishop (in fact, even well before he was appointed coadjutor archbishop) John Nienstedt has been obsessed with demonizing consensual sexual relationships between same-sex couples and working to ensure that such relationships are in no way legally acknowledged or recognized. In terms of the latter, he has failed completely. The anti-gay "marriage amendment," which he tirelessly championed, was defeated and, shortly after, both the Minnesota House and Senate passed marriage equality legislation. Same-sex couples now have the same civil right to marry as opposite-sex couples. During the often contentious marriage amendment "battle," many Minnesota Catholics opposed Nienstedt's anti-gay activism. In 2013 they celebrated the victory of marriage equality in the civil sphere. 

Here's the crux of the matter: The time and energy that Nienstedt expended on demonizing gay relationships and attempting to deny such relationships legal recognition in civil law, could and should have been focused instead on creating a local church reflective of gospel values, including confronting and dealing with the many issues relating to clergy sex abuse within the archdiocese; issues, which Nienstedt openly admits in his deposition, he was "out of the loop" about (emphasis in original).

Reading the transcript, you can't help but wonder whether Nienstedt has been keeping track of the stories that put him in front of Jeff Anderson. During a lengthy exchange about Shelley--the priest whose computer contained "borderline illegal" images--Nienstedt is fuzzy on basic facts about the case, such as which of his employees advised him to do what with those photos. For several pages of testimony, he claims that the archdiocese turned over the files to the police in 2004--that's why, he says, he didn't immediately have the material sent to the cops when Haselberger discovered them in 2012. "It was taken as a fact," Nienstedt testified, "that that had already been turned over to the police and the police had made a decision on it." But in fact they had not. Nienstedt later corrected his mistaken, but curiously detailed account. He got confused, he explained, because the archdiocese had hired a retired law-enforcement officer to review the images. 

And when Anderson questioned Nienstedt about Wehmeyer, again the archbishop seemed oddly uninformed about the case. He repeatedly claims that Haselberger warned him that Wehmeyer shouldn't be promoted to pastor because he's "same-sex attracted," that he had propositioned two young men at a bookstore. What about Haselberger's concern about the cleric's diagnosis of sexual addiction? Anderson asked. "I don't recall that." And: "I don't remember that at all." Which is odd, because Nienstedt said that he read the report from the treatment facility Wehmeyer was sent to after his misconduct came to light. Nienstedt also can't recall that Wehmeyer was trying to pick up teenagers at a gas station. (There's more to say about the Wehmeyer case--especially the question of when the archdiocese learned of the first allegation and how long it took to report it to police. To be continued.)

As usual, the Catholic bishops are tying to undercut support for the continuum of women’s health care needs by treating contraception, and the women who use it, with contempt. Happy Easter Cardinal Dolan. 

Charles Martin Wamika, Catholic bishop of Uganda’s Jimja Diocese, reportedly used his Easter message to praise those who have worked to free the land of gays and to encourage parents of gay children to turn them over to authorities. According to a post from human rights activist Melanie Nathan, a young Ugandan reported, "He said throughout human history the catholic church has fought evil and blood has been shed, he called on all the Christians to do whatever they can in their own means to clean this city."