By Tim Rohr
Troy's
post (or
here) titled "
The Archdiocese is being dishonest, feigning remorse but now blaming their rape victims" provides much to comment on, everything from the accusation in the title to the other side of the story to the real reason to attend Mass in the first place.
So let's give it a go.
Troy is upset over an announcement at a recent Mass wherein parishioners were asked to contribute money in order to purchase a parish property which was forfeited as part of the archdiocesan bankruptcy settlement to compensate victims of clergy sex abuse.
Upon hearing the announcement, Troy writes:
I sat there embarrassed, feeling bad. I felt ashamed. And then I thought, fuck you. I was ashamed when my St. Anthony School vice principal raped me for the first time on December 8, 1993, and then scores more over the next several months. I was 13. I’m tired of the shame that I was raped by a Catholic school teacher when I was a kid. I’m tired of the Catholic Church covering up for its holier than thou pedophiles and pedo sympathizers. Sick miscreants. Piss off, and then when your little penises scrape the last pieces of shit stuck in your degenerate and pedophile anal canals, piss off again.
I can somewhat empathize with Troy. Several months ago as the bankruptcy case came to a close, there were several announcements after many Masses about the financial hardship my particular parish would be facing. And there I stood in my pew, feeling like all eyes were on me, since after all, the bankruptcy had its genesis on this very blog.
Given what the fallout of my actions to expose the largest clergy sex abuse machine in the whole Catholic world (per capita) cost me, I've often second guessed myself, especially since, other than ridding the church of Apuron and closing down the fake seminary, nothing much has changed.
The Neo's are still here and going strong. The Neo-priests, one of whom appears to now be Troy's new hero, are still here. And several who aren't here are still on our payroll. And the sordid moral culture which gave both rise and cover to the sexual perversity that spawned the worst record of clergy sex abuse in the whole Catholic world is still here.
So while standing there at Mass, all alone in my pew (because I lost my family), and hearing how the church and parish is now suffering as a result of my actions...well...let's say I certainly did feel singled out. But I stopped short of feeling "embarrassed" or "ashamed" as Troy relates.
I can also relate with Troy on another thing. I don't talk about it much but I have referred to it in previous posts: I was also "abused" by a priest in my teens. (Note: Troy was abused by a teacher, not a priest.) He didn't get very far with me because I ran away. But just the "approach" violated me, especially since the priest had showed such interest in me - which I thought was genuine, but turned out to be "grooming."
And that was just the beginning of the damage. The only way I can explain the damage that followed is to refer to that scene in Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye sings "And one little time you pull out a thread, and where has it led? Where has it led?"
Tevye was referring to "tradition," tradition as the thing that keeps everything together. In the family I grew up in, the Church and the pastor were everything, especially for my father who was not only the head usher, the president of the Holy Name Society, and the parish troop Boy Scout Master, he was also the pastor's right hand man - the man who the pastor called in the middle of the night when the rectory roof was leaking or the toilet wasn't working.
I didn't tell my father what happened to me. I didn't really know what happened to me. I just knew something was wrong and I had gotten away from it. But a few years later I inadvertently discovered the pastor in a sexual situation with an adult man who lived next to the church in a house that the parish owned, and a house my father had often worked on free of charge. It turned out that the neighbor man was not only in a sexual relationship with our pastor but was living in the house rent free and helping himself to the parish funds as a perk for being the pastor's boyfriend.
Learning all this, especially way back in the 70's before any of this was known, devastated my father. He stopped going to Mass, developed a hatred for the Church and especially for priests, and things went downhill for him from there. As things descended for my father, so did they descend for the rest of us, leading to the death of my brother which my father blamed on himself, causing him to descend ever further.
"One little time you pull out a thread, and where has it led? Where has it led?"
In the meantime, all this caused me to become a warrior, not against the Church, but for it. I hated what the Judases were doing to my faith, my religion, my Church, and my family, and it made me hyper-vigilant to anything that smelled of the smoke of Satan, particularly in the sanctuary.
I ran into it again when I was a teacher in the U.S. Virgin Islands. No need to go into that story here, but it was almost a replica of what happened in my home parish years earlier. So I wasn't new to this stuff when the Apuron thing showed up in my face. In fact, it had been showing up ever since I moved here in 1987, especially living in Agat with all those stories about "the Agat boys."
In January of 2015, I related these experiences to an Apostolic Visitator (aka "Inquisitor") named Archbishop Savio Hon, the then-Secretary for the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. The same Hon would be appointed Apostolic Administrator to this archdiocese after Apuron fled Guam over one year later.
I don't remember how those stories came up when Hon interrogated me, but they did. And upon telling Hon of my past experiences with the likes of Apuron, Hon accused me of carrying out a personal vendetta against Apuron.
There were others in the room, including Archbishop Martin Krebs, the then-apostolic nuncio. Upon being accused by Hon, I stuck my hand in his face and said "Stop! I am the father of eleven children and all I'm trying to do is get them into heaven, and I'm having to fight against clerics like you to do it."
Hon adjourned the inquisition and showed me the door. Archbishop Krebs walked out with me. When we got outside, he put his arm around me and said "good show." Krebs knew what was going on. And I believe he knew that Hon had not been sent to Guam to get to the bottom of the problem, but to save the Neocatechumenal Way, which is exactly what we would find out a couple years later.
(At the time Hon was taking orders from Cardinal Filoni, the "Red Pope," and the Neocats main man in Rome.)
And this is what makes this thing with Troy weird. As mentioned, his apparent new priest-hero is the neocat priest, Harold Colorado Prieto, who Troy is now defending (I wrote about it here and here), yet Harold was not only Apuron's right hand man and constant companion for several years, but he was also part of the cabal that worked to shut me up and shut me down so that the same clergy abuse that Troy hates so much would never be exposed.
Weird.
Now, let's get back to the thing that Troy is mad about.
Usually when I see a post from Troy about church, it's about Mass at St. Anthony's in Tamuning. However, the thing Troy describes happened at San Juan Bautista in Ordot. So I don't know if Troy was visiting or not, but per a comment by Ron Eclavea on Troy's FB post, if Ron's account is true, then Troy missed the Mass where there was more context to the announcement. Here's what Ron says:
+++++
Ron Eclavea
I go to 6:30pm mass on Sundays at Ordot.
Can you provide a transcript of exactly what was said regarding blaming of the victims? If that is really the case it is definitely wrong.
A few months ago the parishioners were informed of the land parcel in question being up for sale as a “result” of the “court litigation”.
Everyone in the world is basically aware off this sad scandal in the church here on Guam.
The truth regarding the land is that the Ordot Parish put out a questionnaire asking the parish members what to do whether to simply let the process go as is ….or to attempt to re-acquire the property.
The overwhelming response was to re-acquire.
So this is what the parish will attempt to do based on the parishioners wishes.
We have to be very mindful and well informed regarding priests ….
Zechariah 13:7
“Strike the shepherd and the sheep scatter.”
Scattered sheep are lost sheep.
Satan’s time is short now and is brilliant today at discrediting the priests & the priesthood and he is using every method available to him to do this!
God established the priesthood in Leviticus and it is perpetual and everlasting!
No priests …no forgiveness of sins.
People abandoning the church and the priests is EXACTLY the aim of Satan in his quest to take souls
It is quite evident…he’s winning around the world. 🙏🏻⛪️🙏🏻
Divide …& conquer
+++++
So according to Ron's account, it was the parishioners who decided they wanted to purchase the property back. This is both allowed and reasonable. For properties for sale in the settlement trust fund, there is a provision in the listings which gives the "Archbishop of Agana" (the Church) the RIGHT TO REPURCHASE.
And, per Ron's account, it was the parishioners of this parish who decided they wanted to raise the money to repurchase the property, and not "the Church" acting selfishly or insensitively as Troy seems to perceive it.
That piece of land isn't going to do the victims any good. The only good that land is going to do for the victims is if it gets sold. The bottom line is that the money for the purchase of the property, regardless of who purchases it, ends up in the trust fund for the victims. So why does Troy care who buys it?
As an aside, even though I was at the root of the stuff that led to the bankruptcy, after the bankruptcy proceedings were finalized, I advocated for parishioners to do exactly what these parishioners are doing: come together, organize, and buy back their properties, but this time keep the title under an entity separate from the "Archbishop of Agana."
There's a few other things Troy says that I want to comment on:
TROY: "Just like hundreds of religious and lay people within the Archdiocese of Agana said and did nothing while hundreds of boys and girls were being raped by priests and Catholic school teachers for decades."
ME: Yes, that's true: "hundreds of religious and lay people...did nothing." Why did they do nothing? And I don't want to hear about fear or respect for the priest, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I think it was. I think it was the same bullcrap that goes on in families all the time, the same thing that shuts you up about what Uncle Bill is doing to your daughter because you don't want to shame the family or cause trouble in the "familia." I think it also has to do with some of these lay people (maybe a lot) getting favors from Fr. Whoever, maybe greasing the skids for an annulment or overlooking the fact that your cousin isn't a practicing Catholic and letting him be the godfather anyway.
TROY: "The archdiocese is going to blame me and the other victims for what they did? They sound like government of Guam elected officials. At least elected officials aren’t child rapists dressed in desecrated garments. At least corrupt politicians aren’t covering for a system that perpetuates sexual assault against children."
ME: Actually, Troy, that's a bit laughable. This stuff happens in public schools all the time. In fact, when we were working to get the bill passed which gave Troy and others the right to sue the archdiocese, the main concern coming from certain senators was whether or not the law could be used to sue the government. I forget the details but there was something like "sovereign immunity" which protected government entities, or at least limited the extent of the suit. Once the senators were assured the public schools and GovGuam wouldn't suffer, they were all for it - since they knew it was really just aimed at the archdiocese.
And that brings me to something else before I forget. And it's something I said before. The initial victims, those who had the courage to take a public stand before there was any law to protect them - and did not hide behind their initials but used their real faces and names, did not want money damages, they wanted an apology, an apology from Apuron.
But Apuron ran away after the first public allegation from Roy Quintanilla in May 2016. And that's when Harold's "Red Pope" sent Hon out here to kill the uprising. I say "Harold's Red Pope" because it was the Neocat master, Cardinal Filoni, who was calling the shots. I point out "Harold" because, as already referenced a couple of times, Troy is now his best buddy.
Hon failed to put down the uprising because of a very few faithful people, mostly older, who refused to sit down and shut up. And, on orders from Filoni, Hon made a last gasp attempt to sink the bill lifting the statute of limitations after it received unanimous support from the legislature and made its way to the governor's desk, when Hon put out an all points bulletin to all the parishes to sign a petition demanding that then-Governor Calvo not sign it.
Remember now, Hon was acting on Filoni's orders, and this was all about saving Harold and the Neocats, and particularly the fake seminary.
Thanks to the people who wouldn't shut up or sit down, which did not include Troy at the time, Filoni and Hon failed, Governor Calvo signed the bill into law, and victims like Troy had a path to $$$$, be it via private settlement, as it appears to be the case with Troy, or those who stuck it out for the full-fledged lawsuit and bankruptcy proceedings.
I'm actually disappointed that so many "settled" for out of court settlements. By doing so they kept their names and an account of what happened out of the public record. And those of us who fought so hard and lost so much would have really liked to see those records.
Yes, yes. I understand about the need for privacy and to avoid further shame and all that. But people, other people, many people suffered and lost much to win justice, not just for you, but for this whole archdiocese. And the only way to insure that justice was really done was to run up all those names and details on a flagpole so that this sh*t never happens again! Private settlements took that away from us and leaves the door open for it to happen again and again and again.
Troy also takes a slap at Archbishop Jimenez and the church's anti-abortion stance saying that if life is so important why not use the money to support the fight for life instead of buying the property.
That's sort of a stretch, but it's not uncommon to hear something to the same effect, i.e. "if you care about the unborn so much then why don't you do this and why don't you do that, etc." I'm not going to go there on that. The bottom line is what I've already said. According to Ron Eclavea, the parishioners decided to do this, not the archbishop, not the pastor, and not the church.
Lastly, I want to address some stuff in the comments where people, agreeing with Troy, say that this is why they still believe in God and love Jesus, but don't go to church anymore.
I can only say what I've said many times before: Don't leave Jesus because of Judas. And while I can love Jesus and pray to him anytime, anywhere, there is only one place I can receive Him, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. And that's at the Catholic Mass. And to be received Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity by YOU is why he was born to this world, suffered, died and rose again.
Next time, just don't stay for the announcements.
