Sunday, September 28, 2014

GO AHEAD. COME AFTER ME.

As we all know, the drivel over at Edivaldo & Holly's blog is so asinine and intellectually bereft that it is only worth visiting for entertainment value. I have more enjoyable forms of entertainment  - such as the long list of personal threats and insults I receive daily from the "fruit" of the Neocatechumenal Way - so I don't even bother to peek. However, I do receive copies of comments and postings from "pathetic.com" and here's one:



If anything, this shows how much THEY are afraid of ME. How funny. I am only now ?????? beginning with Kiko? LOL. And changing my focus from the Archbishop????? LOL. Here, let me help you all.


The Archbishop is right when he says "no one can get me". His only boss is the pope. Only the pope can remove him. No amount of petitions, public protests, or postings on my blog is going to remove him. And chances are, given his age, Rome will do what it has done with far more problematic characters: just wait till they die or turn in their resignation at 75.  (Of course the Archbishop has another boss, which is why St. John Crysostom said what he said about the "floor of hell". But we'll leave that for where it belongs.)

So meanwhile, what do we do? Well, we continue our petitions, protests, postings, letters to Rome, letters to the Nuncio, letters to the editor, etc. We continue because if nothing else, it has at least put a stop - for now - to the Archbishop's dragging his trash into Masses with children. I'm sure his neo-masters spanked him good after that fiasco at FD. 

We also continue because we need the paper trail for Rome to consider when it appoints the next bishop. But mostly we continue because we want Rome to see the real evil, the evil of Kiko's theology, a theology that casts Christ as a sinner and eviscerates the sacrificial nature of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We want Rome to see Kiko Arguello fully on display, and there is no better place than the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam.

Now, let's move on to the so-called "corrupt" dealings with Msgr. James. The fact that I've received several comments about this, and that it is being spoken of over on "pathetic.com", tells me that the new rector's folks are playing fast and loose with personal and internal documents over at the Cathedral. 

Now, because I am public enemy #1 for these idiots, you can bet they are looking for something to take me down. This is good. They are so warped with hatred that they are going to do something stupid very soon. And unlike Msgr. James, I don't have to obey anybody. So once they make even the slightest mistake, I am prepared to sue everybody beginning at the top. (I wonder what if feels like to drive an Equus...hmm, maybe I can get the driver to come with it!)

Now, smart people will know that I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't have all my ducks in a row, i.e. a piece of paper justifying every dollar. But these are stupid people. And more than that, they are hateful stupid people. So I have no doubt that they will disregard this warning and do something stupid anyway... allowing me to CASH IN!!!! YES!!!!!

By the way, for the record, I am one of the few people in the whole archdiocese who received a paycheck for actually MAKING MONEY for it instead of taking money from it. I ran an enterprise, a store, a store that I built from the ground up, a store that cost me and my family many more hours than we ever could have been paid for. Actually, now seems like a good time to tell you the story.

Around 2003, my friend and partner, Dr. Robert Morgan, formed the Catholic Evidence Guild of Guam as a response to the growing exodus of Catholics to other churches. As a part of that, he and I began buying Catholics books and selling them after Masses at the parishes around the island. 

Dr. Morgan, a Captain in the Navy, was transferred away from Guam in 2004 and my family and I continued the book business. In order to get to the early Masses in time, I would get my elder children up at 4am on a Sunday morning, tie tables to the top of my Trooper, load it with chairs and books, head off to whatever church we were going to, set up the tables and books, and stand outside in the sun and the rain for 6-8 hours, and sometimes all day when we stayed for evening Masses, come home, do inventory, count sales receipts, put everything away, and take the books back to the Downtown Deli in Agana where we left them during the week for sale on a consignment basis. 

As anyone can research, the standard reseller discount for books is 40%. Shipping, since we shipped them here Priority Mail averaged 25%. That left us 15% profit. On a good Sunday we did about $400 in sales. That gave us $60 in profit. I paid my daughters $20 each. That left the company $20. Let's see now. We started at 4am, finished about 8pm. That's 16 hours. And to make it even let's throw in another 4 hours to account for banking, data entry, book research, maintaining and applying for vendor agreements, ordering and receiving. So how many of you would stand outside a church all day for $1 an hour?

As you might guess, we didn't do it for the money. There was never any money in it. We did it because no one else would do it, and because we believed that Catholics needed to have access to missals, catechisms, stories of the saints, prayerbooks, and Catholic bibles. 

In 2005 I was asked to join the Archdiocesan Evangelization committee. The Archbishop personally asked me what I thought the Archdiocese needed. I replied "a bookstore". Currently there was only one religious bookstore in town and it wasn't Catholic. To its credit it had a Catholic section and I spent many hundreds of dollars there educating myself, but I couldn't understand why a 90% Catholic island couldn't do the same.

I had no intention of starting or running the store. I knew the time demands of retail and the extremely low profit in book sales, neither of which would mesh with my raising and feeding a family of 13. However, since I was already knowledgeable about books and had vendor relationships, I agreed to establish the store if the members of the Evangelization Committee would agree to staff it. The idea was to get out of the office and into the street. The store would serve both as a place to get Catholic materials into people's hands but also to personally evangelize. 

This was my first experience with a church "committee", so I didn't know better. And while I blame only myself (for not getting everyone's commitment in writing), the "committee" staffing thing didn't happen and I was left to run the store. I don't quit things that I start, so I pressed on. I had to rely on the free and, at most, underpaid labor of my children to keep things going. I had other businesses to run, and in the middle of all this, our family was hit with a very costly medical emergency which took us many years to recover from. The smart thing would have been to close the store, but I didn't. 

Right before I opened the store in the Agana Shopping Center, Msgr. James was then developing the new gift shop at the Cathedral and approached me about working with him to develop the book business for the gift shop. That would have been great. It would have been the easy thing for me to do. However, I so believed in getting the faith out of the church and on to the street that I went with the Agana Shopping Center location at a huge cost in time and money to me and my family. 

The Archdiocese did help in procuring for the store a $13,000 interest free loan from Kamilan Karidat, all of which was paid back on schedule in two years. (You can ask Deacon Tenorio.) This amount represented less than half of the start up capital, and of course there is no dollar figure for the amount of sweat equity that went into it. I want to mention my friends Bruce Williams and Robert Camacho here. Bruce, at no charge and for the love of the mission, built the interior of the store (shelving, etc.) and Robert assisted with the layout, design, and colors, again, simply for the love of the mission. (Keep Robert in your prayers. He is undergoing cancer treatment.)  My wife and children spent countless hours helping in every way and finally when things were up and running, they manned the store 7 days a week, 8 to 10 hours a day. 

The store was ALWAYS a burden for us. I already showed you the profit margin. But in addition to that, now we had to pay rent, common area fees, the shopping center's required marketing fund fees and a percentage of the sales (as mall store owners know), not to mention all the other normal business expenses: taxes, supplies, inventory loss, depreciation, store improvements, utilities, etc. 

For two years we managed to break even simply because my children worked mostly for free and so did I. But in 2007 I decided that this either needed to make money or I needed to close up. The burden was too great on my family. I thought if I could get away from all the costs of being in a mall, that my profit margin would be better. So I moved to a location in Agana down the street from the Cathedral. Business owners know how costly it is to move and even this small move set us back about $10,000, not to mention the lost business due to the change of location. 

Hearing about the move, Msgr. James again asked me to consider moving our store into the Cathedral Gift Shop. Again, it would have been the smarter thing to do. I was impressed with Msgr. James offer. There is no money in books. If there is any money in religious items, it is in the statue and religious article business, but not in books. Yet he was anxious to build up the book business in the gift shop. There could have been only one reason: a belief that Catholics should have access to Catholic literature.

However, I declined his offer. I had two reasons. First, I still believed that our store's main purpose was to evangelize on the street and not from a church. The second, now in hindsight, proved to be true. If I moved into the Cathedral, I would lose the autonomy I needed to stay with my mission. I knew that as long as Msgr. James was the rector, everything would be okay. However, I knew he would not always be the rector and that the next rector could be hostile. He was.

In 2009, I was ready to take Msgr.'s offer. Our store had continued to break even, but I could no longer ask my children to work for free to keep it open. I had a few employees, but even at minimum wage, there wasn't the money to justify the huge amount of time the store was taking, and meanwhile, we had added another child to our family. 

In November of 2009, I decided that even if I couldn't keep my mission on the street open, that it would be better to keep the mission going no matter what, and so I moved the store into the Cathedral gift shop. The deal included the purchase of the store's inventory and display hardware at cost, and my assuming the position of the former manager at the same salary. My duties included managing the store, purchasing, receiving, inventory control, and being "on the floor". This relationship continued until the beginning of 2014.

It ended because I wanted to distance myself from Msgr. James and the Cathedral.  I knew that the Archbishop would try to destroy Msgr. James to get to me. I had taken particular care never to involve Msgr. James in my efforts to defend Fr. Paul against the Archbishop. I knew that the Archbishop believed that I was getting all those documents from Msgr. James. But I wasn't. NOT A SINGLE ONE. The fact is, the Archbishop has many enemies, many more than he knows. But he should know them. He made them. So they gave me the documents, but not Msgr. James. And I never asked him for anything because I knew that the Archbishop would suspect him first. 

Despite my care to keep Msgr. James away from what I was doing, I knew that sooner or later, given the Archbishop's vindictiveness (he had already gone to Rome to get me evicted from the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher) that he would be coming after me sooner or later and that to do that he would need to take out Msgr. James. And so he did. 

In addition to my salary which was all of $21,756.80 per year, the only other money transacted was the purchase of our store's inventory and display hardware, as well as the regular reimbursement for inventory purchases. And I have a piece of paper for every dollar. So go ahead, come after me. But on second thought, while I'll take the Equus, AAA can keep the driver.




12 comments:

  1. Tim,
    Just wanted to thank you and your family for your sacrifices to the true Catholic Faithful of Guam. We always enjoyed your store at the Agana Shopping Center and were truly pained when you moved from there. I know it wasn't your intent for sympathy when you wrote this, but I never really knew the sacrifices you made. We will always be indebted to you for what you continue to do, and that is evangelize for the "one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church".

    It's a shame that a people including clergy can be so hateful, but the Neo's are like addicts and won't see beyond their noses. I say again that when Priest follow the teachings of layman there becomes that danger of going "Way"ward.

    Please know Tim that there are many of us who are with you in this fight to regain our church on Guam and correct or rid the injustices that have befallen us.

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  2. They are so desperate they will resort to anything. Keep up the good work Tim our people rely on your truth that you speak for all of us.

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  3. Tim, the Archbishop seems to have gotten away with libeling his priests and a layman, but it won't take much more, especially if he says something about another layman in public, to precipitate a civil law suit. And that layman should demand a jury trial, and go full board with the interrogatories and depositions...

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    1. Sadly we are nearing civil law suits against aaa which will cause further division to the unity and peace of our church.

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  4. Tim, take the driver, please.

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  5. Tim, first of all: Thank you for all you have done and continue to do for Jesus! I find it incredibly hard to process all the attacks and insults hurled your way for simply defending the faith. I know of you from all the anti-abortion prayer walks and demonstrations I attended with my family; which to me, was one of the indicators of your character. I pray that God continues to give you the strength to persevere with the good fight ahead of you. Please be careful as I do believe the people you are fighting may not stop at anything to hurt and discredit you. God bless you and your family my friend.

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  6. Tim, I am not familiar as to how many family members you have under your roof, but thought you and others may enjoy this statistic.
    U.S. Census Bureau Poverty Thresholds, 2012
    Size of Family Unit Poverty Threshold -- Four people $23,492

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  7. Thank You for all that you do. Even when you first arrived in Agat you and your family got involved before moving to the cathedral. Wow, you really opened up your personal life. That shows how much of a good person you are. (hehe...no one asked for your W2 but you put it out there faster than the cathedral did when ask for their documents.) May God keep you strong in fighting for all of us.

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  8. Tim, it takes a lot of courage to stand up and do what is right. May the Holy Spirit continue to inspire and guide you, and may you and your family continue to be blessed.
    Thank you for making JungleWatch the go-to place for many of our island Catholics to express their views without fear of retaliation.

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  9. Thank you Tim for the personal sharing on the bookstore. Certainly have no concerns over you or the book store. I know you are a man of honesty integrity. But the three will look at the book store to attack you and Monsignor . But I also can well imagine all the paperwork is in order so nothing to worry about. Catholic bookstore is an important ministry and as you rightly say no one maks money out of a book store. It is a ministry and most good people do no look to make money out of ministry. Ministry must be self supporting it is not for profit.

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  10. What is tragic from al this was that when you running the bookstore and Monsignor James was running the Cathedral Basilica and the Catholic Cemeteries, the bills were paid!!! Since the brutal take-over, Monsignor David, the new rector, and those running the cemeteries cannot pay the bills. The Chancery had to bail them out. Now, who is incompetent and has mismanaged the finances of the Basilica and the Cemeteries? The people who ran it for 20 plus years and kept the loans current and paid the bills, or the current administration who have botched their job in less than two months? They have managed to destroy 20 years of steady and viable administration in 2 months.

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  11. With the disgusting and devilish way that Apuron, Quitugua, Cristobal and the Neos kicked out Msgr. James and all the GOOD people out of the Agana Parish, no wonder there is even more chaos and loss revenue!

    The "money tree" grew legs and walked away alongside Msgr. James, ha! Those Neos thought they could fool the money tree into growing money FOR them, by showing their power and vindictiveness. Flexing your pathetic excuse for muscles do not scare people, it actually acts as comic relief!

    Sorry for them Neos, the "tree," that miraculously helped pay for the bills, have also uprooted itself and ran at lightning-speed; as far the H3LL away from Apuron and the NeoCancers!!!

    I don't know about you, Apuron, Quitugua, Cristobal and Pius, but Msgr. James looks REALLY good-----well-rested, and even younger; now that he doesn't carry the burden of what should have been your jobs to begin with, for the past two decades. It also doesn't hurt one bit that he is supported with A LOT of LOVE and PRAYERS from people from all walks of life, not just those "walking your D*MNED Way"

    ...You dubious, evil, men look right about your age, and then some. Apuron surely does not look like he sleeps well, his brain might fall asleep, but his conscience may be awake, not letting his body get that recuperative rest. For all we know, you'll be using our money for cosmetic surgery to hide your stress-related, ultra-fast, progressive signs of aging! Botox fills, hair dye anyone?

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