Furor Grows Over Newark Archbishop's Stance On Priest Banned From Ministry With Children

Amid calls for a Vatican investigation, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers came under fierce criticism Monday for his handling of a priest who attended youth retreats and heard confessions from minors in defiance of a lifetime ban on ministry to children.

Child Abuse Enabler Abp. John J. Myers

At the Monmouth County church where the Rev. Michael Fugee had been spending time with a youth group, angry parishioners said they were never told about Fugee’s background and they questioned Myers’ defense of the priest, the subject of a lengthy story in the Sunday Star-Ledger.

"It’s complete craziness that the church can let this happen," said John Santulli, 38, a father of two at St. Mary Parish in Colts Neck. "I’m a softball coach, and I need a background check just to get on the field. Every single person I spoke to today said, ‘Oh my God. I didn’t know about this.’ It’s incomprehensible."

What a hoot! Rev. Fugee has fun with children.

Trenton Bishop David M. O’Connell, who previously said Fugee was operating in the diocese without his knowledge or permission, has ordered the pastor of St. Mary to bar the priest from any church activities, a spokeswoman said in a statement Monday.

The bishop of Paterson, Arthur Serratelli, has likewise said Fugee was on a retreat at Lake Hopatcong without permission.

For the first time in his many years as an advocate for victims of clergy sex abuse, Mark Crawford, New Jersey director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called on the archbishop to resign, characterizing Fugee as the latest in a string of problem priests shielded by Myers.

Read more at The Star-Ledger >>

America's Worst Bishop Must Go!

"Myers has shown a pattern of leniency toward pedophiles, indifference to potential victims, and a haughty disdain for those who dare to question his judgment."

New Jersey's largest newspaper today called for the resignation of the Archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers  (full text below).

John J. Myers, the corrupt Archbishop of Newark

I had my own experience with the pompous and arrogant Archbishop of Newark over a decade ago, and when time permits I will tell that story.  

He has been at war with the people he should have been serving almost since the day he arrived in Newark.  I have seen this day coming for a long time, but it is regrettable that so much damage has been done in more than a decade.  Scores of schools in the Archdiocese of Newark have been closed because Archbishop Myers has demonstrated, again and again, that he will only stand up for the well-being of clergy.  Indeed, he has been criminally negligent in ensuring the safety and well-being of New Jersey families and their children.  As a good friend put it, "he's thoroughly a company man, working for Clerical Worker's Local #417 rather than for the people."  It is a pattern that developed prior to his appointment to Newark when he was Bishop of Peoria.  Even then he made excuses for the buggery of children and attempted to reinstate a priest suspended for child sexual abuse.  He refused to meet with the priest's victims, and when families finally expressed their outrage through the media, Myers commented that he "didn't realize they would be so upset."  In virtually any field of endeavor, it would be hard to find anyone more insensitive and with a worse sense of public relations.
 

Some will say in defense of Archbishop Myers that he is a "conservative" or that he is "orthodox."  I would respond that his is a sort of orthodoxy and  conservatism that does irreparable damage and impedes the work of truly faithful, orthodox churchmen striving to build up the Body of Christ.  

If Pope Francis intends to carry forward Pope Benedict's efforts to purge the Church of its "filth," the corrupt and destructive Archbishop of Newark should be the first to go.  Eventually, the legal system will prosecute and convict this thug for criminal conspiracy and negligence, but it would be a hopeful sign if Church authorities deal with the very worst of corrupt, American bishops first. 

From The Star-Ledger Editorial Board

After all the Catholic Church has been through, it is beyond infuriating that Newark Archbishop John J. Myers can be so neglectful of his duty to protect children from sexual predators. 

He should resign immediately and apologize to the families whose children he left exposed, barring some stunning new disclosure that could exonerate him in the face of the damning facts presented by The Star-Ledger’s Mark Mueller in today’s edition.

The case concerns Michael Fugee, a priest who was convicted in a sexual abuse case in 2003 after he confessed to fondling a 14-year-old boy, and being a compulsive masturbator obsessed with penis size.

The conviction was overturned when a higher court found the judge had given improper instructions to jurors. Instead of trying Fugee again, as they should have, prosecutors allowed him to avoid jail by joining a program for first-offenders.

Part of the deal was an agreement that Fugee signed, along with the archdiocese, committing all parties to keeping Fugee away from minors.

Fugee was not to work in any position involving children, or have any affiliation with youth groups. He could not attend youth retreats, or even hear the confessions of children.

With the full knowledge and approval of Myers, Fugee did all of those things. Look at the picture of him clowning around with children in today’s paper, and it makes you want to scream a warning. The agreement was designed to prevent exactly that.

This is not the first time Myers has shown contempt for the safety of children in his flock. While many bishops are making a sincere efforts to rehabilitate the church, Myers has shown a pattern of leniency toward pedophiles, indifference to potential victims, and a haughty disdain for those who dare to question his judgment.

Before this latest flare-up with Fugee, Myers had promoted him to an influential position in the church as co-director of the office that helps guide young priests, sending precisely the wrong message. Earlier this year, Fugee was found to be saying Mass and living at the rectory of a church in Rochelle Park. Parishioners had not been told of his criminal past, so again, children were exposed. In 2009, Myers appointed Fugee chaplain of St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, again without telling the hospital about Fugee’s restrictions.

Unlike some other bishops, Myers will not release the names of priests who have been credibly accused of abuse. 

In 2004, he wrote a letter of recommendation to six dioceses in Florida for one priest, a week after learning the priest had been accused of assaulting a woman after breaking into her house. The same year, he banned one priest from public ministry after investigating an allegation that he had abused a boy, but did not notify laypeople or other priests. In 2007, he did not tell laypeople about a credible finding of molestation against a priest working in Elizabeth and Jersey City, information that was finally turned up by a victims’ group.

Fugee is, or at least was, the real danger. He seems to think he can break the rules. It is Myers’ job to stop him, and he is instead enabling him.

He is refusing to discuss any of this. Our hope is the prosecutors press him to do so. He is a part to the agreement on Fugee, which was signed by the archdiocese’s vicar general on behalf of Myers, and which has clearly been broken.

In the meantime, for the sake of the children, Myers should step down.

Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop Myers Keep the Scandal Alive

From CatholicCulture.org

By Philip F. Lawler

Last Friday I was rejoicing over the news that one American archbishop, at least, finally seemed to “get it” regarding the sex-abuse scandal. Now I’m afraid I was celebrating too soon. Within hours the smile had been wiped off my face, by two separate incidents that showed how thoroughly many bishops have missed the point.

Catholicism in the South: Once a Strange Religion, Now Forging Ahead With Evangelical Fervor

I grew up in the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island, spent twenty years in the Diocese of Arlington, then 10 years in the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, and have been in the Diocese of Charleston since 2004.  As the following article suggests, the sense of being a minority and the challenge from the surrounding culture has made Catholicism in the South far more vibrant, and the South a far better place to transmit the Faith to children than are many far more established Catholic communities in the North.

Newark Archbishop John J. Myers

The Archbishop of Newark, for example, seems to occupy himself with little other than the liquidation of a vast real estate network.  The major news story coming from his chancery offices each year is how many schools and parishes are to be closed.  And good luck trying to convince anyone that perhaps a little evangelical zeal, commitment to sound catechesis, reverent liturgy and prayer might actually renew the faithfful and fill churches.  His Excellency lives a princely life and he is not available to those who pay for it.  Exceptional parishes in the Newark Archdiocese that row against the current, and where the faith has always been alive and vibrant -- most notably the Polish parishes -- seem to encounter particular scorn and prejudice because their success embarrasses the rest.

It is not proud Archbishops who are renewing the Church in America, but rather holy priests and faith-filled Catholic communities in unlikely places like Arlington, Greenville and Charlotte.

A group of nuns stop at a gas station and ask for directions. A local woman asks for prayers. This scene would have been unimaginable 50 years ago.

The day after a newspaper in the small town of Shelby, N.C., reported that the Te Deum Foundation had acquired nearby land for a new Catholic seminary and monastery, a group of nuns in habits stopped at a local service station.

Fifty years ago — 10 years ago and, to some extent, even today — many Southerners regarded Catholics as unsaved and Catholicism as a non-Christian mystery religion.

But that day, everyone at the station greeted and welcomed the sisters. One woman even asked the nuns to pray for her injured nephew.

This acceptance marks a sea change in the Southern Baptist and evangelical Protestant-dominated South, where Catholics make up less than 10% of the population, compared with double-digit percentages in most northern states.

Read the rest of this entry at National Catholic Register >>

A Humble Friar and Proud Potentates

I have loved the Capuchin Franciscan Friars of Detroit since discovering the life of Detroit's and America's great saint, Father Solanus Casey.  I only wish there were more like Father Solanus and this good Brother, Al Mascia, to embarrass the gold cufflinked hierarchy who are too often focused on managing the decline of the local Church -- a decline resulting from their own failure to "launch out into the deep, and let down [their] nets."  Here is a friar, in the tradition of his founder, who can't even get use of one of the scores of vacant buildings maintained by his and most Archdiocesan bureaucracies; it might have a deleterious effect on property values.

Archbishop John J. Myers

The gold cufflink crowd of the Church's middle management find it more seemly to issue statements on "the problem of poverty" than to roll up their sleeves and prepare a sandwich for someone who is hungry, or find  a place for them to sleep.  They operate huge realty companies that market the closed and shuttered properties earlier generations of the faithful sacrificed to build.  They might think about the poverty of those in the rear view mirror as they drive to their country homes, but these days they are more likely to rub shoulders with real estate investors paying $5000 to attend one of their golf outings.  When they have to visit a parish or walk through an airport they request armed police protection to insulate them from the riffraff.  And for good reason too, the victims of criminal priests they shielded might turn up anywhere.

In the end, the brown robed monk hauling hot food and drink through the snowy streets of Detroit will do far more for the building of the Kingdom than will the pompous potentates of America's episcopacy.

Detroit's Brother Al Mascia puts soup kitchen on wheels

From The Detroit News

By Louis Aguilar

Brother Al Mascia has much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and so does his flock. 

After losing the brick-and-mortar headquarters for his Detroit-based charitable operations earlier this month, the brown-robed Franciscan friar has kept serving the homeless, the elderly and others in Detroit.

Mascia anticipated the closing of the building more than a year ago and raised $4,000 to buy two specially designed tricycles with vendor carts in front and storage trailers in the back so he wouldn't miss a beat in serving his clientele. 

"St. Francis went beyond the walls of the medieval city to serve the exiled," said Mascia, referring to St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Catholic religious order to which Mascia belongs. "Now, I have no walls between me and the people I serve." 

Mascia's Canticle Café and St. Al's Community Center used to be housed in a large aging building on Washington Boulevard that cost $200,000 a year in utilities and maintenance. The building's owner, the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, sold it to a private firm that now owns the entire side of the street.

An archdiocese official said it cannot find an affordable new space for the community center because many building owners in a rebounding downtown don't want a tenant that serves the poor and homeless.

But the development didn't stop Mascia. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, in sun, sleet and snow, he pedals into the outdoor waiting area of the Rosa Parks Transit Center on the tricycle — a practice he started last year. 

'Working for the people'

On Tuesday last week, dozens quickly lined up — the homeless Army veteran with two children, the recovering crack addict, the elderly woman who said she comes mainly to stave off loneliness. Mascia and three volunteers gave away all they had within 45 minutes. 

"Brother Al is always working for the people," said Leona Palazzolo of Detroit, who says she has relied on the friar's services for seven years. "He's always got time to listen to you, and he doesn't ever talk down to you. He's just real nice to be around." 

The change in operations might be a blessing in disguise, Mascia said.

"There is more opportunity here than the brick-and-mortar center," he said. "I see more families here on the streets, more of the mentally ill. We are about serving people."

The tricycle-based Canticle Café provides service six times a week at the public bus terminal on Cass Avenue just north of Michigan Avenue. Father Tod Laverty from St. Aloysius Catholic Church on Washington Boulevard and other volunteers operate the mobile help center on the days when Mascia is out raising money. He has already found a benefactor to buy another tricycle.

Can-do spirit

The brick-and-mortar Canticle Café would not have lasted as long as it did without Mascia's fundraising and venture into retailing. In 2008, the recession led to a decline of more than a third in corporate donations, and donations kept shrinking, the friar said. The community center served about 300 daily. It offered breakfast, groceries and clothing, Internet access and general education diploma and literacy classes, as well as medical help from a nurse practitioner. 

"Even someone like me knew that this wasn't a temporary setback. We had to act," Mascia said.

First, he began to sell shade-grown, fair-trade coffee from Chiapas, Mexico, by partnering with a local coffee vendor. The Canticle Cafe blend helps the Detroit poor and the indigenous growers in Mexico.

The venture raised thousands of dollars for the Detroit center. The cafe expanded into selling candles called Friar Lights, T-shirts and dog biscuits. The retail line still survives despite the shutting of the shelter.

Mascia is also a musician who writes songs inspired by the seniors and homeless people he meets on the job.

About two years ago, he decided to take his guitar and amplifier on the road — along with a specially made pushcart full of coffee, Friar Lights, T-shirts and CDs — mainly to suburban parishes, where he hopes his concerts will move people to help the downtown friars continue their good works.

Concert planned

Mascia has a concert scheduled for 3 p.m. Dec. 18 at Prince of Peace Church in West Bloomfield Township.

Mascia says he's eager to expand the services. He is forging more partnerships with private businesses, such as the one with Ypsilanti-based Perk and Brew Inc.'s Brenda Moore, as well as churches of other denominations and other Catholic churches, to keep growing. What he now mainly lacks, he said, is more volunteers to help him in the winter months.

"When we get the new vehicle, I hope to go into the alleys and other areas where people with no home may be seeking shelter," Mascia said. "We want them to know that someone is thinking about them."

Catholic Schools: Essential Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow

By Daniel J. Cassidy

The Catholic school system in the United States is unique in the world in that its founders intended that every Catholic child should be formed by it. Massive Catholic immigration to a nation with an alien culture and Protestant ethos persuaded bishops that formation in Catholic schools was essential to preserve the faith of millions of Catholics for whom they had responsibility.

When the first Council of Baltimore met in 1829, it is estimated that in a nation of 12 million, there were 500,000 Catholics. By the time of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884, the number of Catholics had grown to more than 8 million. Despite enormous obstacles, the bishops of the United States, in three successive Councils of Baltimore, not only affirmed the importance of formation in Catholic schools, they committed themselves to building a massive parallel school system. The bishops agreed that every parish should have a tuition-free Catholic school, supported by the whole parish, and instructed parents that they “must send their children to such schools unless the bishop should judge the reason for sending them elsewhere to be sufficient.”

The foremost historian of Catholic schooling in the United States, Father Harold A. Buetow, explains that public schools in nineteenth century America were influenced by Nativism that sought to “Americanize” the children of Catholic immigrants. Thus, parents and the hierarchy “could not in conscience permit their children to attend schools conducted mainly by Protestant teachers, with a Protestant viewpoint, and with religious instruction and religious exercises of a decidedly Protestant (even if nondenominational) character.” The bishops were concerned primarily with what all bishops ought to be concerned, the saving of souls and the building of the Kingdom of God.

Today, many Catholic parents would be grateful for a Christian culture, Protestant or otherwise, in public schools. Instead, their tax dollars provide, and (unless they can afford private alternatives) law compels them to send their children to schools imbued with secular relativism, where immoral lifestyles are upheld, premarital sex is accepted as long as it is practiced “safely,” and where Christian history and culture, if it is taught at all, is often mocked and condemned.

Heroically dedicated parents often provide antidotes to a culture in the government schools that is deadly to both the body and the soul. Unfortunately, most of today’s parents are themselves victims of government schools and have little or no formation in the faith.

Numerous studies have affirmed the academic superiority of Catholic schools. In America’s inner-cities they are havens, affording the poorest of the poor a safe, ordered environment, where their children are made to feel a loved part of an affirming community. But they are also the seed-beds for the future Church. Sociologist Andrew Greeley has conducted research indicating that those formed in Catholic schools are far more likely to be practicing their faith in their thirties and forties, than are the products of public schools and the parish CCD program. Distinctively Catholic schools should be forming knowledgeable, dedicated Catholic laymen, they should be the source of many religious vocations, and given the large numbers of non-Catholics they serve, particularly in the inner-cities, they should be the source of many conversions to the faith.

However, in the face of virulent secularism and moral breakdown in America and throughout the West, today’s bishops seem more concerned with managing a profitable corporate enterprise than with the saving of souls. According to the Hoover Institution the Catholic population has grown from 45 million in 1965, to almost 77 million today. But the Hoover Institution also points out:

Catholic school enrollment has plummeted, from 5.2 million students in nearly 13,000 schools in 1960 to 2.5 million in 9,000 schools in 1990. After a promising increase in the late 1990s, enrollment had by 2006 dropped to 2.3 million students in 7,500 schools. And the steep decline would have been even steeper if these sectarian schools had to rely on their own flock for enrollment: almost 14 percent of Catholic school enrollment is now non-Catholic, up from less than 3 percent in 1970. When Catholic schools educated 12 percent of all schoolchildren in the country in 1965, the proportion of Catholics in the general population was 24 percent. Catholics still make up about one-quarter of the American population, but their schools enroll less than 5 percent of all students.

A system that at one time educated 1 out of every 8 American children is being closed at the very time it is needed most.

Is the Church in America less prosperous than it was in 1829 when it committed to providing every Catholic family a quality Catholic education? Are the threats to one’s soul and eternal salvation any less? Certainly not! What is markedly different is the commitment of America’s bishops to faith formation and the saving of souls. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said “the danger today may be the primacy of administration over love.” Today’s bishops with their expensively tailored suits and gold cuff links too often resemble corporate CEO’s preoccupied with managing real estate empires. And they are far more focused on material resources than on the divine. John J. Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, is a good example; instead of committing to evangelization and building up the Kingdom of God, he has paid millions to outside consultants to manage the difficult public relations problem of closing scores of churches and schools. Using the consultants’ state of the art psychological and public relations techniques, and employing slogans like “new energies” to imply some great work is underway, the Archdiocese of Newark speaks of mergers, collaboration and consolidations, but the net effect is that far fewer children receive a Catholic education today than when he was appointed seven years ago. Many of the schools closed served those who need them most, but are least able to pay. In the eyes of the Archbishop and his corporate management team, the schools were simply a financial drain, not the means to save souls. As such, they must be eliminated. But like so many of today’s CEO’s who are paid huge bonuses even when profits are down and employees are being terminated, the Archbishop of Newark has complained to his seminarians in Rome about having to pay $300 for each of the custom made shirts he purchases there, and he has also purchased a comfortable estate in New Jersey’s horse country and installed a new swimming pool for his personal enjoyment.

In contrast to what is happening in most American dioceses, two Kentucky priests have written a powerful letter to Catholic parents about the necessity of providing their children with a Catholic education. They even assure parents that if finances are preventing them from enrolling their children in the local parochial school, they will find whatever financial assistance is needed. (See their letter here) Their extraordinary letter is a throwback to the great bishops of the nineteenth century who actually believed that they had the awesome responsibility to shepherd souls to heaven, not manage the collapse of Catholic life and the closing of Catholic institutions with an “après moi le deluge” attitude. Let us hope the Papal Nuncio has fast-tracked them both to the Episcopacy.

In the week following Easter, the National Catholic Educational Association holds its annual meeting. Attendees are, for the most part, the principals and teachers that work for bishops. Their meetings are usually characterized by “happy talk” slogans that suggest, despite their decimated numbers, they are completely oblivious to the collapse of their once great school system. Let us hope and pray that in this late hour they recognize the urgent need for orthodox and distinctively Catholic schools. May they read the Kentucky priests’ letter and realize the awesome, divine role and responsibility they have in the salvific mission of the Church, and may they, by resolving to restore Catholic education in the United States, even provide the Christian witness that might save the souls of a few lost shepherds.