Abuseniks

Manufactured anger is in the news right now with President Obama's latest stage performance over the VA scandal. Rush Limbaugh is talking about it right now with a fun montage made up of about 5 years worth of unconvincing Obama play-rage over things like the IRS scandal, the healthcare.gov fiasco, etc. Limbaugh also makes the very astute observation that the mock outrage is messaging which targets people he calls "low-information voters", not those of us who know play-acting when we see it.

The Media Report has a great example of the same sort of mock-rage-as-messaging with this piece about Mitchell Garabedian's recent fit asserting that the Catholic Church is "once again acting in the most immoral way by allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children" merely because the church wouldn't pony up over a false accusation:

Garabedian probably thought he would have it just as easy when he filed a similar lawsuit, also in 2012, against the Diocese of Fall River, alleging abuse by a priest starting in the late 1970s. In his suit, Garabedian made the astonishing claim that a priest abused two parishioners for nearly a decade starting when the boys were 9 or ten years old and lasting until they were seventeen.

Alas, however, the diocese hired independent investigators to look into the matter, and they concluded that the evidence did not support Garabedian's claim. Most notably, the accused priest died in 1996 at 83 years old, and not a single allegation had ever been made against him.

Yet even though no evidence of abuse was found by investigators, the diocese agreed not only to offer free counseling for the men but to also enter a mediation process to bring closure to the case.

However, as the Diocese of Fall River reports, Garabedian recently abruptly "ended the mediation process."

In other words, when the diocese apparently refused Garabedian's demand for money, he unleashed his tirade that the Church was now somehow "allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children."

Ah, yes, those pesky details. Why do you Catholics want evidence of wrong-doing? CAN'T YOU SEE HOW ANGRY I AM ABOUT THIS?!? GIVE ME MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!

The real treasure in this post is the comment posted by Publion. I'm including the full text here. It's long, but it does a great job at summing up what is really going in the Catholic Church-only abuse industrial complex.

I would also ask of ‘Another Mark’ (the 19th, 952PM) the same question that ‘Mark’ asks (the 20th, 652AM): why trust this lawyer (hereinafter: ‘MG’)?

Readers may recall my mention of a Boston attorney in D’Antonio’s book who was involved in various bits of quite possibly prohibited and unlawful skullduggery in helping the Boston Globe get its series published in early January 2002 (D’Antonio is pro-Stampede and sees MG’s activity as sort of charmingly enterprising). That attorney D’Antonio was discussing was none other than MG. And MG is certainly a prime candidate for inclusion among those torties who have taken the Anderson Strategies into the big-time.

And on what basis are we supposed to credit ‘Another Mark’s (hereinafter: ‘AM’) unsupported and global assertion that “the church HAS allowed the wholesale abuse of children”? [giveaway exaggerated formatting retained]

Which is then followed by snark to the effect that MG “must be doing something right now that David Pierre must attack you”.

Which also includes the classic Playbook legerdemain of presuming that the reporting of a historically and actually verifiable fact (i.e. MG’s publicly stated ire at the Diocese of Fall River) constitutes “an attack”.

And then a mere epithet about it being “laughable” that MG treats the Church as “a trip to the ATM”, also a juvenile bit from the Playbook that has been seen here many times.

And I would add that where the Church asks (as many organizations do) for “donations”, it does not try to take potential ‘donors’ to court in order to obtain vast sums from them on the basis of legal charges almost completely unsupported by any evidence.

Then a blunderbuss blam of a bunch of (otherwise quite rationally explicable) Church decisions in regard to “closing churches” that had been built – we see the smarmy heart-string pulling manipulative bit from the Playbook here – with “your hard earned heartfelt donations” from “you and your parents”.

Then a fresh paragraph with more Playbook stuff.

First, to the effect that “David Pierre acts as if every victim is a money sucking leach” [sic]: if anyone deliberately tried to bring a lawsuit against you, alleging acts from the long-ago for which they have no evidence but merely a story, and publicizes the whole thing highly, what would you consider such a person to be?

But then again: DP has never said any such thing as “money sucking leach” [sic] and I can’t recall any commenter using the term either.

But then again: in the Abusenik Playbook, if you don’t totally buy the script, then you are ‘attacking’ them. (The Abusenik objective here is to distract you from the fact that they may well be involved in something characterizable as the activity of a “money sucking leach”[sic] and therefore try to quickly get you (the reader or hearer) to focus on the (merely alleged) victimization of the whole thing.)

Second, we get – yet again – the mere but utter presumption of “the damage done” by alleged acts the nature and even the very existence of which has never been demonstrated. And I would also recall here the recent material here discussing the cautious use of “potential” in the statements of various scientific papers and research results. ‘Potential’ is not synonymous with ‘certain’ (and so even some phrase like ‘an absolutely certain potential’ would not move things forward at all in this regard).

Third, the Wig of Bemused and Honest Innocence with that “sadly”.

And then fourth: the use of the presumed “attacks” (discussed above in this comment of mine) to cluck condescendingly that “such attacks [do not] somehow support our church”. Would that be “our” Church? And is it not ‘supportive’ to point out how the allegations are unfounded and highly dubious and seriously improbable?

And in regard to “responsability”: did so many Abuseniks go to the same school of misspelling? There seems to be a pattern here.

And then fifth: the old “enabler” trope, right from the Playbook.

And then the next paragraph works toward whistling-away the profound and abyssal evidentiary and veracity problems with the Stampede and the Abuseniks: “simply because no one came forward while the priest was alive does nothing to prove he did not abuse during his lifetime” [correction supplied]

No, the fact that “no one came forward while the priest was alive” does not provide conclusive evidence that the alleged abuse never happened. But it also a) provides no evidence that the alleged abuse did happen and b) provides an element of increased-probability that the story was concocted opportunistically after the priest died, in order to cash in on the Stampede piñata game.

And it also provides some grounds for doubting the conceptual chops (and perhaps good faith) of anybody who would try to pass off such a conceptual misch as if it were clear and pristine logic, upon which he might base his assertions with no further need for explication.

And if the Church’s paid investigators “found no evidence” – although the Church (or Diocese, here) must know that it would very likely have to rely on those investigative findings in a public forum – then the same can be said for any investigators the tortie might engage (although, as we know, given the now-established dynamics of the Anderson Strategies in the Stampede, the tortie might well expect that his client’s claims and allegations and stories would never be required to face public and objective scrutiny in the first place anyway).

Abuseniks “really do see” us as “dumb blind sheep”, but “fortunately” – and especially through the work on TMR – that is not the case.

Which is what moves the Abuseniks to toss up the type of stuff we see here in the AM comment.

"Dump blind sheep", "low-information voters", whatever you want to call them the terms do not apply to us here. But I think "money-grubbing ambulance-chaser" applies to Mitchell Garabedian.

Good News is No News

Apart from going unreported, good news is also a relative term in the world of the mainstream media; that's why we must turn to alternative media like the Media Report for coverage on Catholic clergy abuse reports when the drive-bys go silent.

In a newly released annual audit of abuse by independent experts, it was reported that there were only ten contemporaneous abuse allegations made against priests even deemed "credible" in all of 2013 (out of some 40,000 active priests) and that the "fewest allegations and victims" ever were tabulated since annual reports were first compiled in 2004.

This is obviously good news. But predictably, the mainstream media is notably silent about this very positive report, even though in years past when the numbers were less encouraging, the media fell over themselves to breathlessly report any unflattering statistics which they could dig up.

A search of news coverage about the Church's new annual report found that not a single secular news outlet (e.g., the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune etc.) reported on the study.

Someone recently told me I should feature more links to alternative media where we could get the facts not reported anywhere else. So this article couldn't be more timely. The Media Report is an excellent source for coverage of what is really going on vis-à-vis the soon to be defunct scandal industry. You can sign up for their newsletter near the bottom right of the site page, and I suggest that all EQE readers do so.

Here are some good bullets points listed in the piece to fire at those who still clutch at the abuse scandal like Linus with his security blanket.

• 40% of all identified priests who were accused in 2013 were already long deceased;
• 78% of all identified priests who were accused in 2013 are either already deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or simply missing; and
• 90% of all abuse accusations last year allege incidents from at least 25 years ago.

It is obvious that the abuse narrative is now merely a media obsession as the article states. Unfortunately, too often obsessing leads to lying, and the lies continue to do harm:

The facts are the facts: Bogus accusations abound

And a closer look at the study further uncovers another issue that the mainstream media adamantly refuses to report: that bogus accusations against Catholic priests are rampant, and the vast bulk of accusations are either demonstrably untrue or simply unprovable.

According to this year's numbers, a staggering 80% of the 2013 cases in which an investigation had been completed fell into the categories of either "unable to be proven" or "unsubstantiated." Only a mere 14.6% of all 2013 cases were even deemed "substantiated" by the liberal standards of review boards.

Indeed, we have long reported on the pervasiveness of false accusations against priests, but no one in the mainstream media has the courage to pursue a counter-narrative story. The time is long overdue.

Check out the Falsely Accused Priest tag link. It's a gold mine for truth-seekers on this topic. It references the link to the WSJ article by Dorothy Rabinowitz The Trials of Father MacRae, a must read to provide balance and to unmask the predators who pretend to care about actual victims of real crimes. If these criminals and ambulance chasers really cared about the victims of abuse, they would move their operation to a place in which there was evidence that abuse was actually occurring.

Hide it under a bushel? No!

Currently slogging through my 2013 backlog. Happy New Year by the way.

I didn't read this excellent piece by Erika Rudzis when Keith blogged it almost a month ago. It's a good summary of what is wrong with the so-called Benedict Option. It might be an essay responding to a comment Kathleen once made: "The Benedict Option is neither Benedictine nor an option. Discuss."

Reading the whole thing doesn't take long. She points out many problems with Bunker Christianity from a Catholic point of view and quotes Pope John Paul II on the mission of lay people in the world. She also writes this, something I can imagine our current Pope stating and definitely agreeing with:

Bunker-Christianity is ironically un-Christian because it’s unloving. It reflects a lack of interest in the salvation of those outside our safe faithful communities. Love of God has to extend to love of neighbor, which means desiring and working for our neighbor’s salvation. I’ve heard it said that the desire to evangelize is an indicator of a strong personal faith — the degree to which we love God, we must desire to share that goodness with others. But if we lock ourselves away from those who need to hear about the faith the most, we make ourselves incapable of laboring for the salvation of others as is appropriate to the vocation of a lay person.

God so loved the world, so we should, too. That doesn't mean we love the sin and disorder in the world. The founder of Opus Dei, St. Josemaria Escriva, points out that wanting to make the world into a cloister is itself a disorder. I always go back to the good ol' Letter to Digonetus to show how it has always been seen by true Christians way back in the days of AD 130. Here are a few excerpts:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.

Wow, they eat the same kind of food as everyone else. Amazing. Who would have thought that?

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.

It's actually very simple, although, of course, it is far from easy. So let's not complicate it. If you are called to be a monk, take a vow of silence. And if you are called to live a life of a regular Christian, don't build a church in your backyard.