UNITED STATES
The American Conservative
By ROD DREHER • October 4, 2013
At the risk of going too Catholic-heavy today, I want to point to the latest from the two church scandals, and explore briefly the implications for all church leadership in our present time.
First, news from the Diocese of Trenton, about a 30-year-old Catholic priest who was the object of a sting run by two young Catholic men who were sick and tired of him sexually harrasing them. They pretended to be a 16-year-old boy online. Fr. Riedlinger engaged in graphic sexting with what he thought was a minor. The two men saved all the evidence and gave it to the Bishop of Trenton, to show him that Fr. Riedlinger had no business in the priesthood. Bishop O’Connell yanked him from the parish. The two men pressed the bishop to tell the people of the parish what their priest had been up to, in case he had treated others in the parish that way:
The messages show Riedlinger needed little or no invitation to steer the conversation to sex. He spoke of past encounters and the size of his penis, encouraged Josh to enjoy sex with his boyfriend and repeatedly told him how alike they were in their thirst for pornography and sex.
“I love u dude. Ur a sick (expletive) like me,” Riedlinger wrote.
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