Good questions and comments re Bishop Durocher’s letter John. I think the shock is that Lahey was caught! And further shock that word is out that a few powers that be have known of Lahey’s proclivites for over 20 years and watched in silence as the man masqueraded as a man of God.

One more comment on this. Durocher says:

“May we respond with an even greater awareness of our weaknesses, a greater commitment to care for our children, a greater engagement in building a society where such horrors do not happen.”

Christ’s ultimate condemnation went to those who harm a child – “better that a millstone be hanged around his neck.” Nothing from Christ about “our weaknesses.” While it is true that we do all have weaknesses, there are weaknesses and there are weaknesses. We do not all molest and/or sexually abuse children. Nor do we all delight in images culled from those who do. In fact I think it is fair to say that the average person is totally repulsed by the very notion of child sexual abuse and/or its images.

As for a commitment to build a society where such “horrors” don’t happen I would personally prefer Durocher and his fellow bishops give us a commitment to purge the Roman Catholic church of clergy who engage in such despicable and deviant acts. Let’s start there and see what happens. Get those deviants out of the priestood -all of them. Clean house.

“Weakness?” Let those who exhibit signs of this so called “weakness” spend the rest of their days making amends to God for the damage they have done – and let them do so as laymen – with millstones around their necks. That would truly show a greater commitment on the part of Bishop Durocher “to care for our children.”

I imagine most readers of this newspaper have been shocked and scandalized at the news that a Canadian bishop has been charged with possession of child pornography. I share their shock. I also feel a great sense of shame that a fellow bishop can have been involved in such a horrible activity.

The seriousness of the charge and the immediate resignation of the accused shakes our confidence in his presumed innocence. It also undermines our trust in all persons in positions of authority, including those who, like Bishop Lahey, have used their authority positively to heal breaches with past victims of clergy sexual abuse. In the face of such paradoxical behaviour, I can only shake my head in bewilderment and sorrow.

I cannot understand what would lead a person to be interested in pornography involving children.

All pornography is demeaning, but that involving children is even more so, since it requires that children be abused in its production. Unfortunately, anyone with an Internet connection can easily access this mate-rial. It has become a scourge in our society, one which needs to be combated as courageously as possible.

My heart goes out to all those who have been deeply shaken by this revelation. My prayers are offered for all of us.

May we respond with an even greater awareness of our weaknesses, a greater commitment to care for our children, a greater engagement in building a society where such horrors do not happen.

Paul-André Durocher

Bishop of Alexandria-Cornwall

———————————————————–

I have been reading and re-reading this letter to the editor that our friendly Bishop Durocher sent in to the Standard Freeholder on October 2nd….Questions?????

-Is he shocked that a Bishop has been CHARGED?
-”Involved in such a horrible activity”…..meaning what?….getting arrested?
-”Used their authority to heal breaches with past victims”…….HE threw money at them. 30 pieces of silver did not work then…it will not work now!!!!
-”Paradoxical behaviour”….HE is sitting on a mountain of evidence of paradoxical behaviour…is this considered paradoxical?

The message from there then becomes generic…….as much to say that ANYONE can do it, we ALL have access to these sites. BUT he will pray for us!!!! Let the PREYING stop and our prayers will be answered!!!

John Mac Donald

Damage control. Coral the troubled masses..

Since the agency is retained by the diocese it is therefore no doubt answerable to the same, and all info obtained during counselling sessions will no doubt be channelled right back into the diocese.

I wonder if there is a duty to report any and all allegations of child sexual abuse to police? Does anyone know?

And what about kiddie porn? Would there be a duty to report “alleged” sightings of kiddie porn?
…………………………………………….

Lahey charges prompt free counselling for N.S. CatholicsLast Updated: Saturday, October 17, 2009 | 1:18 PM AT
CBC News

A family counselling organization founded by the Roman Catholic Church is offering free services to parishioners of the Antigonish diocese in the wake of child pornography charges against their retired bishop.

Former bishop Raymond Lahey, who helped negotiate a landmark deal for children who were sexually abused by priests, was charged with importing and possessing child pornography on Sept. 25 after being detained by border officials 10 days earlier at the Ottawa International Airport.

Earlier this week, police in Nova Scotia executed search warrants at Lahey’s homes and office, looking for pornographic images on computers he used.

On Saturday, Family Service of Eastern Nova Scotia had an ad in Halifax’s Chronicle Herald newspaper offering free counselling to individuals or entire parish communities struggling to cope with what it called “past or recent victimization issues.”

According to the ad, the organization has been hired by the Antigonish diocese to provide the service.

The non-profit group was founded in 1969, but traces its roots back to the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when churches set up counselling and assistance programs for people.

Lahey is staying at a priest’s residence run by the archdiocese of Ottawa until his next court appearance there on Nov. 4.

RCMP and the provincial child internet exploitation unit executed a search warrant at Lahey’s residence in Sydney, N.S., on Wednesday. One computer was seized.

Investigators also executed search warrants at Lahey’s former home and office in Antigonish on Tuesday. Two computers and some external media devices were seized.

Another picture of a sad-looking little lad with welts and possibly bruises on his body!

On a bishop’s laptop!!

Such outright unmitigated depravity.

Those poor poor little boys – I do hope they can be found, and I do hope and pray that they are not afraid to talk.
…………..

Warrants detail images on bishop’s computer
Documents say some naked boys appear younger than 12

Halifax Chronicle Herald

By EVA HOARE Staff Reporter
Sat. Oct 17 – 4:46 AM

Raymond Lahey (CP)

ELECTRONIC GEAR SEIZED
Some items confiscated from Bishop Lahey’s residences:

•HP Pavilion computer

•HP desktop computer

•D-Link USB wireless network card

•8-mm video camera

•Four 8-mm videocassette tapes

•Case with 11 CDs/DVDs

•Ricoh 35-mm camera

•Vodafone cellphone

•Nokia cellphone with SIM card

•SanDisk MP3 player

•MPIO MP3 player

•Four audio cassette tapes

•87 pages of computer printouts on domain name registrations

An image of a naked boy wearing only rosary beads was among those found on Bishop Raymond Lahey’s laptop computer, a search warrant has revealed.

The RCMP’s child exploitation unit obtained the warrant in order to search the bishop’s home in Antigonish and his apartment in Sydney. The document sheds more light on what Canada Border Services Agency officers found on the bishop’s computer after it was seized at the Ottawa airport on Sept. 15 as he was returning to Canada from overseas.

Bishop Lahey, 69, was charged Sept. 25 with possessing and importing child pornography. He resigned as bishop of the Antigonish diocese the next day.

Court papers state that the image of the “young, naked male” showed him wearing only “a set of black rosary and a set of white rosary beads around his neck.” The boy appears to be nine to 12 years old, court papers say.

A number of other images of young boys were found on the bishop’s laptop, the documents say, and videos show “young males engaged in sexual acts.”

One image allegedly depicts a young naked male who appears to be “hurt, as there are red welts and marks on his stomach and chest area.”

“He looks sad in this image,” the documents say.

The search warrant also alleges the bishop used the MSN Messenger service on the Internet to have sex-related chats with people he met online and “that the conversations are often sexual in nature.” But the bishop told police he believed to the “best of his knowledge” that all the people involved in the talks were adults.

The RCMP say the images were found on his laptop in a folder called Downloads that contained 964 files. There were 33 videos in another folder, the court papers say.

None of the information supplied in the warrants and supporting paperwork has been proven in court.

The documents also state that on Oct. 9, the RCMP interviewed Shane Earle, who once lived at the Mount Cashel orphanage in St. John’s, N.L.

Mr. Earle, whose treatment at the orphanage in his teens led to a public inquiry, has said he saw child pornography at Bishop Lahey’s home in the 1980s when the clergyman was still living in his native Newfoundland.

Mr. Earle told police last week that he had spent some weekends and holidays at Bishop Lahey’s home in Mount Pearl, N.L., while he was a resident of the orphanage. He alleges he saw a “catalogue containing images of child pornography” during one of his stays at the bishop’s place.

“The images were of boys not older than 13 years old and that in some images the boys were sexually aroused,” Mr. Earle told the RCMP.

Church officials in Newfoundland acknowledged before Mr. Earle’s Oct. 9 interview with the RCMP that little was done to help him in the ’80s after he told them what he had allegedly seen in Bishop Lahey’s quarters.

Last month, during the bishop’s conversation with a Canada Border Services Agency officer at the Ottawa airport, he indicated that “he had no time for child exploitation, no time for child pornography,” the warrant states.

He said he had a computer at home and that it had the LimeWire file-sharing system installed, the documents say. LimeWire was not on his laptop, however.

On Tuesday, the RCMP carried out two searches in Antigonish, at Bishop Lahey’s residence and at his office, and one in Sydney, at Apt. 7 at 29 Xavier Dr., believed to be a home for retired priests.

They confiscated two computers in the Antigonish searches, and a lawyer for the Antigonish diocese told them that there had been a computer in the bishop’s apartment in Sydney, according to the search warrant.

Police were also told that the diocese had bought four computers for the bishop since August 2003, the court papers state.

Bishop Lahey told police in an Oct. 1 interview that he didn’t have a computer at his Antigonish home and he would use his laptop or a computer that office staff also used, the court papers state. But a housekeeper said she had seen two desktop computers there as recently as Sept. 22.

The bishop is free on bail and staying in Ottawa pending his next court appearance there on Nov. 4.

( ehoare@herald.ca)

I wonder if the week’s schedule will be amended to discuss other pressing issues …such as what to do when one of their own is caught red handed with a stash of kiddie porn? and/or what do when one of their own says he is attracted to males aged 20 to 21? and/or what to do to pacify the suddenly less than passive masses? and/or how to help Bishop Raymond Lahey wile away the hours in his Kilborn apartment without being spotted?

Rest assured there will be lots of tongue wagging going on behind closed doors to come up with a unified message.

I’m posting below the notice re the plenary which is on the CCCB website. I see that one of their keynote speakers is Dr. Richard R. Gaillardez. I know very little about Gaillardez but do know that he felt the U.S. bishops exhibited “a horrible moral failure” in advocating a policy of zero tolerance re clercial sexual abuse. I gather that that means he is not an advocate of zero tolerance?

I also see that according to the CCCB website there has been criticism regarding the bishop’s pick of Gaillardez – I’ve posted part of the posting below as well. I checked about and the referenced blog site is SOCO or Bust – it can be accessed here: http://www.socon.ca/or_bust/?p=2984

From the little I have read it looks to me as though Gaillardez would indeed be classified as a dissident – but, nothing new for the CCCB to court dissidents.

Here are the posts from the CCCB website
…………………..

The Bishops of Canada to hold their Plenary Assembly, 19-23 October

CCCB website

16 October 2009
(CCCB – Ottawa)… The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) will hold its annual Plenary Assembly, 19 – 23 October 2009, at the Nav Canada Centre, Cornwall, Ontario. About 90 Bishops will be present to review pastoral activities of the past year and to discuss important questions and issues. They will also elect a new Permanent Council as the two-year terms of its current members have ended, including that of CCCB President Most Reverend V. James Weisgerber, Archbishop of Winnipeg.
In addition to reviewing the work carried out over the past year by CCCB councils, commissions and committees, the Bishops will discuss a number of pastoral issues.

In keeping with the Year of the Priest announced by Pope Benedict XVI, American theologian Dr. Richard R. Gaillardetz, Murray/Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo in Ohio, will deliver two presentations: on the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the priesthood and its reality today, and on the relationship between the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the baptized.

Other issues to be discussed during the working sessions include Catholic identity in the public sphere, Catholic-Anglican relations, the role of Bishops in life issues, and the pastoral response to the poverty afflicting a growing number of Canadians.

Lastly, the agenda will also include an update on the collaboration of Development and Peace with its numerous partners throughout the world, as well as on development projects funded by this organization that the Bishops of Canada founded in 1967.

………..
Professor Richard R. Gaillardetz responds to attacks

CCCB website

01 October 2009

Well-known and award-winning Catholic author and theologian Richard R. Gaillardetz has responded to attacks circulating on a blog about his having been invited by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to give two major presentations on the priesthood at the October 2009 meeting of the CCCB Plenary Assembly. The blog questions whether Professor Gaillardetz is faithful to the doctrine of the Church.

In a letter addressed to CCCB President Archbishop V. James Weisgerber, Professor Gaillardetz affirms his standing as a Catholic theologian who “fully embraces the teaching office of pope and bishops.”

Is the plenary over???

“I hope he has information that will lead to the capture of others involved in this sordid pasttime.”

Does anyone really believe Lahey was in this alone???

Confiscated: one video camera
two cell phones
two MP3 players
11 CDs/DVDs
one file folder containing 87 pages of computer printouts pertaining to domain name registrations

Oh – me thinks – there’s a few people fretting up in Ottawa with this investigation!!!

We shall see….