BALTIMORE (MD)
Ending Clergy Abuse (ECAGlobal.org) [Seattle WA]
November 15, 2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 11-15-21.
“Catholic groups equating homosexuality with pedophilia,” they say “are demonizing gay
survivors of clergy abuse.”
On Tuesday, November 16th at 11:00am, survivors of clergy sexual abuse and advocates will hold a press conference outside of the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront (700 Aliceanna Street) urging the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Pope Francis to condemn the use of the abuse crisis by Church Militant and Steve Bannon to promote an anti-gay political agenda, a central tenet of Tuesday’s protest rally outside the USCCB’s general meeting.
For the past decade, Church Militant has capitalized off the rape and sexual abuse of children, using their suffering as an opportunity to court donors and gain followers. At the behest of their wealthy donors, like financier Marc Brammer, they have built a propaganda network to mobilize support for their agenda of re-criminalizing homosexuality by fear-mongering about the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized groups. By attributing the Catholic clergy abuse crisis to gay priests, they have contributed to heightened stigma around gay men while ignoring every
non-male victim of clergy abuse.
Church Militant’s speakers and partners for the event have their own ties to sexual abuse and
cover-up:
● Speaker and event partner, Steve Bannon, provided media coaching for Jeffrey Epstein, urging him to deny he was a pedophile, calling him a “sympathetic figure.” Bannon has worked closely with the virulently anti-gay Cardinal Burke, who kept a higher percentage of priests with allegations of child sex abuse in ministry than any other diocese in the
United States.
● Emcee Milo Yiannopoulos, at one point, dismissed the clergy abuse crisis saying, “We get hung up on this child abuse stuff…In the gay world, some of the most important enriching, and incredibly life-affirming, important, shaping relationships are between younger boys and older men. They can be hugely positive experiences very often for those young boys.” After facing backlash, he reversed his position, committing himself to the rehabilitation of conversion therapy, likening being gay to an “addiction.”
● Former Apostolic Nuncio, Carlo Maria Viganò, in his infamous 2018 letter, where he accused Pope Francis of covering up the long history of sexual abuse by now-defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has argued that gay priests are the root cause of Catholic child sexual abuse. In his role as Apostolic Nuncio, Viganò himself covered up sexual abuse for several senior members of the Catholic hierarchy who abused children or concealed records, destroying criminal evidence in the process.
Ending Clergy Abuse unequivocally denounces the linking of homosexuality to pedophilia, a right-wing Catholic myth that has been repeatedly refuted by medical and scientific experts. LGBTQ+ people are nearly four times more likely than non-LGBTQ+ people to experience violent victimization, including rape and sexual assault. To use survivors of rape and sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy as political pawns to criminalize homosexuality is a despicable act that the entire Catholic hierarchy – including Pope Francis – have not demonstrated the courage or integrity to rebuke.
Although Pope Francis has urged tolerance, in March, he signed off on a Vatican decree that called gay sex “intrinsically disordered,” and stated, God “does not and cannot bless sin.” While the Vatican avoids inflammatory language, they have essentially endorsed the same position as Church Militant and Steve Bannon. Perhaps this is why Pope Francis and the bishops have not condemned their protest. The Pope has stated that the Church must find a way to help Catholic parents “stand by their [LGBTQ+] son or daughter.” He and the USCCB could start by making it clear that the link between homosexuality and pedophilia is not supported by Catholic teaching.
In a year in which the unmarked graves of thousands of Indigenous children have been located at the sites of Catholic-run Indian boarding schools in the United States and Canada, the USCCB has chosen to ignore these atrocities to focus instead on fueling a Eucharistic culture war. Their leader, Archbishop Gomez, has openly attacked the movement for Black lives calling it a “dangerous substitute for true religion,” that promotes “intolerance” and “injustice,” rather than a fight for universal human dignity in the face of systemic racism and state-sponsored violence. In this and their refusal to denounce the hate rally outside their door, the US bishops have demonstrated an absorption in their own identity politics and a betrayal of the universal human rights proclaimed in the Gospel they claim to preach.
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CONTACT:
Peter Isely
ECA Co-Founding Member
414-429-7259.
peter@natesmission.org
Tim Law
206-412-0165
ECA Co-founder/Board Member
timalaw@aol.comNovember 15th, 2021|0 Comments