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The Virtue of Staying Put What the 'Benedict Option' Forgets about Benedictines
In recent years the term “Benedict Option” has been circulating in certain sectors of the U.S. Catholic Church. For a Benedictine oblate such as myself, this should be a welcome development. After all, the charism of Benedictine monasticism, with its emphasis on faithfulness to flesh-and-blood local communities formed in prayer, liturgy, discernment, and mutual service, can remind all Christians of a basic truth—namely, that no policy we propose for society, no change we seek in the larger culture will be credible unless it grows from the embodied witness of Christian life together. As Gandhi put it, we must “be the change we seek in the world.”
So the Benedict Option, which on the face of it simply calls for an intensification of our commitment to such local communities and to Christian formation, should not be controversial. Yet the phrase has become a rallying cry for something else. Rod Dreher, a prominent blogger at the American Conservative, began promoting the rudiments of the Benedict Option more than a decade ago in his book Crunchy Cons, and will explore it in-depth in an upcoming book on the the subject. The basic proposition is this: American society has become so antagonistic toward Christian values that faithful Christians should turn their primary attention away from the public square, with its fruitless policy debates and doomed culture wars, and instead focus on building local communities, sheltered from the hopelessly fallen larger culture, where Christian values and practices may survive.
To be sure, one does not have to embrace such a dire diagnosis in order to take up a Benedict Option; while only a few Christians will ever play prominent roles in public affairs, many more will find themselves following the Rule of St. Benedict whether they know it or not, simply because their vocation is to witness to the way of Christ by serving their neighbors in ordinary daily life. Nor does a pessimistic reading of the signs of the times, concluding that Christians are losing the culture wars, necessarily dictate retreat. In a recent speech, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput observed bleakly that “the America of the Founders is dead because we killed it,” yet went on to dismiss calls for a Benedict Option in favor of Augustinian duties to the City of Man as well as the City of God.
There is no doubt, however, that many who currently advocate for the Benedict Option do envision precisely this kind of retreat. What’s troubling about such advocacy is that too often it overlooks what is most Benedictine about the Benedict Option, and not, in fact, optional at all: the imperative of all Catholics to stay together, both in global communion and in face-to-face relationships, even when those relationships are hard. In fact the provenance of the term “Benedict Option” offers at least some hope that it might actually fashion a meeting ground amid U.S. culture wars, rather than yet one more point of contention. The idea behind it traces to philosopher Alasdair Mac-Intyre’s magisterial diagnosis of what he considered the incoherence of modern philosophy, and its corresponding failure to guide society toward any real vision of the good. In After Virtue (1981), MacIntyre posited that we are living in a dark age governed by barbarians, and would do well to stop trying to shore up the imperium; instead we should invest in new forms of moral community while we “await another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”
Interestingly, MacIntyrian localism has not aligned neatly with standard left/right polarities. Yes, some Catholics and former Catholics such as Dreher (who was raised as a Methodist and converted to Catholicism before finally joining the Orthodox Church) promote the Benedict Option out of dismay over issues such as same-sex marriage or alleged federal encroachments through Obamacare. Yet among the first and most prominent voices citing MacIntyre’s call were Catholic students of the Methodist ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, who were animated by a left-leaning critique of war, militarism, and American empire. From that circle emerged one of the most notable examples of groups prompted by MacIntyre and inspired by St. Benedict in fresh ways, the New Monasticism movement among young Evangelicals. When Dreher asked one of its leaders, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, what others can learn from the patron of historic monasticism in the West, Wilson-Hartgrove bluntly replied that “Benedict saved me from the Religious Right.”
In any case, the question of whether the Benedict Option necessarily entails a retreat from public matters depends not so much on what we are leaving or resisting in doing so as on what we do once we go deeper into our locales. Withdrawal into self-selected enclaves of the like-minded is hardly a countercultural action in our polarized society, as Bill Bishop has demonstrated in The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. What is countercultural in the United States today is attempting to stay in relationship with people who don’t share our views. Yet it is important to do so, and especially for Christians. Only by listening hard and differing charitably in face-to-face relationships can we develop practices and virtues in which attention to building up local communities can nurture robust public engagement. Such communities and those who speak for their moral commitments may then do so with integrity because they have grounded their work and witness in what we might call proof-of-concept living.
This way of living is the Gospel imperative that Benedictine monastics actually follow, through the particular disciplines that flesh out their vow of stability. What makes Benedictines unique among religious orders is precisely this vow of stability and the practices it entails for monks as they commit to living the rest of their lives in one place, within one community. Whatever other spiritual practices they may have developed (liturgy of hours, lectio divina) or borrowed (Ignatian self-examination), monks in this tradition embrace community life itself as the most basic of their spiritual disciplines. Continuing to live together with people whom one cannot simply “unfriend” exposes self-deceptions and wears off uncharitable rough edges like nothing else.
Unique as the Benedictine vow of stability may be even among Catholic religious orders, something about it is necessary for all Catholics. Indeed, I view the practice of “stability writ large” as the very genius of Catholicism itself. Unlike participating in other forms of Christianity, being Catholic necessitates a refusal to leave in protest when the going gets tough, or to start a new church, or to shop around for another identity, or to bandy about threats of schism. In this sense, to leave Catholicism in favor of another high-church communion such as the Eastern Orthodox is fundamentally a Protestant act. It’s my view that Protestants themselves will need to unlearn those tendencies if they hope to build sustainable Christian communities in the future.
WHEN I MADE THESE arguments in Unlearning Protestantism: Sustaining Christian Community in an Unstable Age, I did so as a gift to my Protestant and neo-Anabaptist friends, though I also hoped I might buttress loyalty and respect for tradition among liberal Catholics. Little did I imagine that loose talk of schism and sneering disrespect for the pope might increasingly come from conservative quarters. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat may be more restrained than others in the conservative Catholic blogosphere, but even he channels its vitriol with jabs at the “ostentatious humility” of Pope Francis and dark warnings that Francis is the “chief plotter” in a conspiracy to change Catholicism that could eventually lead to schism.
We live in a culture profoundly shaped by Protestant individualism. In this culture, abandoning institutions is the default strategy for protesting and remaining untainted by injustice. So perhaps no one should be surprised that such “habits of the heart” (to use sociologist Robert Bellah’s label) have migrated and displaced the Catholic genius for staying put. Douthat himself ably diagnosed these individualistic habits in his 2012 book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics—and endorsed the Benedict Option as a possible response. And well it may be. But it needs the Benedictine imperative lodged firmly inside it. A Benedict Option will never help reduce or even slow the sorting-out into enclaves among Catholics if it serves as just another battle cry in our culture wars. The option will only be truly Benedictine, and deeply Catholic, if it accepts the Benedictine imperative to hang in there with one another, and in communion with the global church, even—and especially—when that requires healthy, honest conflict.
Lacking this imperative, the option of resolving church conflicts by departing from communion becomes all too tempting. Yet that is precisely what appears to be happening when Dreher cites concrete examples of families and communities embracing the Benedict Option not only because they are disillusioned with American culture, but because they are disappointed with the Catholic Church in America. And reassurances that the Benedict Option need not imply complete withdrawal from the public square are hardly convincing when they issue from those whose disaffection with other Catholics, or even the church itself, suggests an even more portentous withdrawal.
Consider what could happen if we were to fully embrace the Benedictine imperative—which actually is just the Gospel imperative to love our neighbors even when they are in some ways our “enemies.” Liberals sympathetic to the anxieties of parents raising children in a confusing world would have to recognize the legitimate need for boundaries and tradition, while conservatives who deepen face-to-face relationship with those in troubled marriages and with the abandoned and divorced would find it harder to dismiss the idea of allowing remarried Catholics to receive Communion as merely a surrender to the sexual revolution. Liberals opposing militarism or gun culture or anti-immigrant sentiment might find themselves framing alternative policy proposals as ways to enhance true security, while conservatives who oppose abortion might give greater attention to the economic conditions and welfare policies that would make it easier for struggling women and couples in crisis to imagine continuing a pregnancy. And over time—who knows?—sustained interpersonal engagement might make it possible to drop the scare-quoted categories of “liberal” and “conservative” altogether.
Apart from the larger implications, each of us would necessarily begin to eschew the temptation to hunker down in our gated thought-enclaves and tweet out our arguments like hand grenades tossed over the walls. Instead we would treat disagreement and conflict in ways appropriate to the prudence and charity that the practice of the Benedictine imperative teaches. We need the Benedictine imperative, in other words, not as a last resort “after virtue” or after any other surrender, but as a first resort on the way to virtuous and civil Christian discourse. We can redeem the Benedict Option by embracing and practicing the Catholic stability that Catholics themselves have too long taken for granted.
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The Virtue of Staying Put
What the 'Benedict Option' Forgets about Benedictines
Gerald W. Schlabach September 26, 2016 - 11:24am 4 commentsPrint
<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = "[default] http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" NS = "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" />
In recent years the term “Benedict Option” has been circulating in certain sectors of the U.S. Catholic Church. For a Benedictine oblate such as myself, this should be a welcome development. After all, the charism of Benedictine monasticism, with its emphasis on faithfulness to flesh-and-blood local communities formed in prayer, liturgy, discernment, and mutual service, can remind all Christians of a basic truth—namely, that no policy we propose for society, no change we seek in the larger culture will be credible unless it grows from the embodied witness of Christian life together. As Gandhi put it, we must “be the change we seek in the world.”
So the Benedict Option, which on the face of it simply calls for an intensification of our commitment to such local communities and to Christian formation, should not be controversial. Yet the phrase has become a rallying cry for something else. Rod Dreher, a prominent blogger at the American Conservative, began promoting the rudiments of the Benedict Option more than a decade ago in his book Crunchy Cons, and will explore it in-depth in an upcoming book on the the subject. The basic proposition is this: American society has become so antagonistic toward Christian values that faithful Christians should turn their primary attention away from the public square, with its fruitless policy debates and doomed culture wars, and instead focus on building local communities, sheltered from the hopelessly fallen larger culture, where Christian values and practices may survive.
To be sure, one does not have to embrace such a dire diagnosis in order to take up a Benedict Option; while only a few Christians will ever play prominent roles in public affairs, many more will find themselves following the Rule of St. Benedict whether they know it or not, simply because their vocation is to witness to the way of Christ by serving their neighbors in ordinary daily life. Nor does a pessimistic reading of the signs of the times, concluding that Christians are losing the culture wars, necessarily dictate retreat. In a recent speech, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput observed bleakly that “the America of the Founders is dead because we killed it,” yet went on to dismiss calls for a Benedict Option in favor of Augustinian duties to the City of Man as well as the City of God.
There is no doubt, however, that many who currently advocate for the Benedict Option do envision precisely this kind of retreat. What’s troubling about such advocacy is that too often it overlooks what is most Benedictine about the Benedict Option, and not, in fact, optional at all: the imperative of all Catholics to stay together, both in global communion and in face-to-face relationships, even when those relationships are hard. In fact the provenance of the term “Benedict Option” offers at least some hope that it might actually fashion a meeting ground amid U.S. culture wars, rather than yet one more point of contention. The idea behind it traces to philosopher Alasdair Mac-Intyre’s magisterial diagnosis of what he considered the incoherence of modern philosophy, and its corresponding failure to guide society toward any real vision of the good. In After Virtue (1981), MacIntyre posited that we are living in a dark age governed by barbarians, and would do well to stop trying to shore up the imperium; instead we should invest in new forms of moral community while we “await another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”
Interestingly, MacIntyrian localism has not aligned neatly with standard left/right polarities. Yes, some Catholics and former Catholics such as Dreher (who was raised as a Methodist and converted to Catholicism before finally joining the Orthodox Church) promote the Benedict Option out of dismay over issues such as same-sex marriage or alleged federal encroachments through Obamacare. Yet among the first and most prominent voices citing MacIntyre’s call were Catholic students of the Methodist ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, who were animated by a left-leaning critique of war, militarism, and American empire. From that circle emerged one of the most notable examples of groups prompted by MacIntyre and inspired by St. Benedict in fresh ways, the New Monasticism movement among young Evangelicals. When Dreher asked one of its leaders, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, what others can learn from the patron of historic monasticism in the West, Wilson-Hartgrove bluntly replied that “Benedict saved me from the Religious Right.”
In any case, the question of whether the Benedict Option necessarily entails a retreat from public matters depends not so much on what we are leaving or resisting in doing so as on what we do once we go deeper into our locales. Withdrawal into self-selected enclaves of the like-minded is hardly a countercultural action in our polarized society, as Bill Bishop has demonstrated in The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. What is countercultural in the United States today is attempting to stay in relationship with people who don’t share our views. Yet it is important to do so, and especially for Christians. Only by listening hard and differing charitably in face-to-face relationships can we develop practices and virtues in which attention to building up local communities can nurture robust public engagement. Such communities and those who speak for their moral commitments may then do so with integrity because they have grounded their work and witness in what we might call proof-of-concept living.
This way of living is the Gospel imperative that Benedictine monastics actually follow, through the particular disciplines that flesh out their vow of stability. What makes Benedictines unique among religious orders is precisely this vow of stability and the practices it entails for monks as they commit to living the rest of their lives in one place, within one community. Whatever other spiritual practices they may have developed (liturgy of hours, lectio divina) or borrowed (Ignatian self-examination), monks in this tradition embrace community life itself as the most basic of their spiritual disciplines. Continuing to live together with people whom one cannot simply “unfriend” exposes self-deceptions and wears off uncharitable rough edges like nothing else.
Unique as the Benedictine vow of stability may be even among Catholic religious orders, something about it is necessary for all Catholics. Indeed, I view the practice of “stability writ large” as the very genius of Catholicism itself. Unlike participating in other forms of Christianity, being Catholic necessitates a refusal to leave in protest when the going gets tough, or to start a new church, or to shop around for another identity, or to bandy about threats of schism. In this sense, to leave Catholicism in favor of another high-church communion such as the Eastern Orthodox is fundamentally a Protestant act. It’s my view that Protestants themselves will need to unlearn those tendencies if they hope to build sustainable Christian communities in the future.
WHEN I MADE THESE arguments in Unlearning Protestantism: Sustaining Christian Community in an Unstable Age, I did so as a gift to my Protestant and neo-Anabaptist friends, though I also hoped I might buttress loyalty and respect for tradition among liberal Catholics. Little did I imagine that loose talk of schism and sneering disrespect for the pope might increasingly come from conservative quarters. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat may be more restrained than others in the conservative Catholic blogosphere, but even he channels its vitriol with jabs at the “ostentatious humility” of Pope Francis and dark warnings that Francis is the “chief plotter” in a conspiracy to change Catholicism that could eventually lead to schism.
We live in a culture profoundly shaped by Protestant individualism. In this culture, abandoning institutions is the default strategy for protesting and remaining untainted by injustice. So perhaps no one should be surprised that such “habits of the heart” (to use sociologist Robert Bellah’s label) have migrated and displaced the Catholic genius for staying put. Douthat himself ably diagnosed these individualistic habits in his 2012 book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics—and endorsed the Benedict Option as a possible response. And well it may be. But it needs the Benedictine imperative lodged firmly inside it. A Benedict Option will never help reduce or even slow the sorting-out into enclaves among Catholics if it serves as just another battle cry in our culture wars. The option will only be truly Benedictine, and deeply Catholic, if it accepts the Benedictine imperative to hang in there with one another, and in communion with the global church, even—and especially—when that requires healthy, honest conflict.
Lacking this imperative, the option of resolving church conflicts by departing from communion becomes all too tempting. Yet that is precisely what appears to be happening when Dreher cites concrete examples of families and communities embracing the Benedict Option not only because they are disillusioned with American culture, but because they are disappointed with the Catholic Church in America. And reassurances that the Benedict Option need not imply complete withdrawal from the public square are hardly convincing when they issue from those whose disaffection with other Catholics, or even the church itself, suggests an even more portentous withdrawal.
Consider what could happen if we were to fully embrace the Benedictine imperative—which actually is just the Gospel imperative to love our neighbors even when they are in some ways our “enemies.” Liberals sympathetic to the anxieties of parents raising children in a confusing world would have to recognize the legitimate need for boundaries and tradition, while conservatives who deepen face-to-face relationship with those in troubled marriages and with the abandoned and divorced would find it harder to dismiss the idea of allowing remarried Catholics to receive Communion as merely a surrender to the sexual revolution. Liberals opposing militarism or gun culture or anti-immigrant sentiment might find themselves framing alternative policy proposals as ways to enhance true security, while conservatives who oppose abortion might give greater attention to the economic conditions and welfare policies that would make it easier for struggling women and couples in crisis to imagine continuing a pregnancy. And over time—who knows?—sustained interpersonal engagement might make it possible to drop the scare-quoted categories of “liberal” and “conservative” altogether.
Apart from the larger implications, each of us would necessarily begin to eschew the temptation to hunker down in our gated thought-enclaves and tweet out our arguments like hand grenades tossed over the walls. Instead we would treat disagreement and conflict in ways appropriate to the prudence and charity that the practice of the Benedictine imperative teaches. We need the Benedictine imperative, in other words, not as a last resort “after virtue” or after any other surrender, but as a first resort on the way to virtuous and civil Christian discourse. We can redeem the Benedict Option by embracing and practicing the Catholic stability that Catholics themselves have too long taken for granted.
About the Author
Gerald W. Schlabach is professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and author of Unlearning Protestantism: Sustaining Christian Community in an Unstable Age (Brazos Press).
Friday, September 16, 2016
Abuse whistleblowers renew request for Vatican inquiry of US bishops
National Catholic Reporter
Abuse whistleblowers renew request for Vatican inquiry of US bishops
Brian Roewe | Sep. 15, 2016 NCR Today
<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = "[default] http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" NS = "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" />14
Eight months without reply, Catholic advocates for survivors of clergy sexual abuse have hit resend on their request for a Vatican investigation into the abuse policies of U.S. bishops.
The Catholic Whistleblowers mailed a second letter Sept. 1 to the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, addressed to its prefect Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada.
The brief one-page letter summarizes and refers back to another letter the advocacy group sent at the beginning of the year. That first letter raised concerns that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was not fully implementing its zero tolerance policy toward abusive priests, and as a result putting children and communities at risk while also creating scandal in the church.
Specifically, Catholic Whistleblowers argues the conference and its bishops have not reported all appropriate abuse allegations to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and lack a mechanism to assure bishops pass such cases to the congregation at all.
"The USCCB established a Zero Tolerance policy regarding clergy sexual abuse and then has worked against its own commitment? What motivates such behavior?" wrote Fr. James Connell, a member of the Whistleblower Steering Committee, repeating a line from the first letter, in all 13 pages, to Ouellet.
Explore Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family with our free Amoris Laetitia study guide.
The Whistleblowers asks Ouellet "to announce immediately and publicly the course of action you are taking in response to our letter of last January."
Catholic Whistleblowers -- a network of clergy, religious and laypeople, many of whom have reported sexual abuse to church leaders -- first contacted the Vatican Jan. 4 with their concerns about possible gaps in the U.S. bishops' policies on handling abuse claims, which are housed in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, or the Dallas Charter.
As for the silence to date, the Whistleblowers said in their latest letter "the lack of response is itself disconcerting."
"We fear that the Congregation for Bishops is supporting the USCCB in its failure to live up to its Zero Tolerance policy. Of course, children continue to be at risk and we fear that the scandal is being expanded," the group wrote.
Earlier this week, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors announced it had begun addressing the abuse issue at seminars for new bishops and had completed a template to assist bishops' conferences and other Catholic associations prevent and respond to abuse.
Since Pope Francis in June 2015 unveiled plans to form the commission, the Catholic Whistleblowers have sought formal investigations of several U.S. bishops, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, Newark, N.J., Archbishop John Myers and Cardinal Justin Rigali. In February 2014, it requested on behalf of Kansas City Catholics a review of former Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., Bishop Robert Finn.
To date, the only response to their appeals has been a brief statement from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, then the U.S. nuncio, confirming he received the Finn petition and forwarded it to Rome. While a Vatican investigation into Finn followed later that year, it remains unclear what, if any, role the Whistleblower petition played. Finn resigned in April 2015.
In addition to sending the Sept. 1 letter directly to the Congregation for Bishops, the group mailed copies to the new Vatican apostolic nuncio to the U.S. Archbishop Christophe Pierre, USCCB president Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, and the 25 bishops who sit on either the Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People or the Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance.
[Brian Roewe is an NCR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter: @BrianRoewe.]
Above is from: https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/abuse-whistleblowers-renew-request-vatican-inquiry-us-bishops
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
St. James weekly collection for August 2016
August 28 weekend
August 21 weekend
August 14 weekend
August 7 weekend
Monday, August 29, 2016
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
![[image%255B14%255D.png]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqu8YUwD1t3SQG5AnAA0jF4-tFyOKfHVzx9ShN1ygvA1X7jC4BQpyUZvyW8N89OTb_GUgBAf6hK5v3ouArMkUv40cu888sY3hmZAzDubFzj96a3gmMAUovA6s3iEh-VvbdT8BeUvbT4zaK/s1600/image%25255B14%25255D.png)
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Philadelphia: With release from prison likely Tuesday, will Monsignor Lynn face retrial?
D.A. Seth Williams has said he is 'fully committed' to retrying the case, but there are reasons he may want to avoid a retrial
Courts Monsignor William Lynn Philadelphia Priest Abuse District Attorney's Office Seth Williams Archdiocese of Philadelphia
By Ralph Cipriano
PhillyVoice Contributor
At a bail hearing set for Tuesday morning, Msgr. William J. Lynn is expected to walk out of court as a free man.
The next move in the legal odyssey will be up to Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams.
Four years ago, it was Williams who successfully oversaw the prosecution of Lynn. The monsignor, who served as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, was convicted by a jury in 2012 on one count of endangering the welfare of a child. The trial judge, M. Teresa Sarmina, subsequently sentenced Lynn to three to six years in prison.
The act of child endangerment involved the transfer of the Rev. Edward V. Avery, a priest with a prior accusation of sex abuse, to a new parish, without any notice to parishioners. Avery subsequently pleaded guilty to deviate sexual intercourse with a former 10-year-old altar boy dubbed “Billy Doe.”
It was a “historic” prosecution, the district attorney proclaimed. Lynn became the first Catholic administrator in the country to be sent to jail in the church’s ongoing sex abuse scandal, not for touching anybody, but for failing to adequately supervise an abusive priest.
But last December, the state Superior Court overturned Lynn’s conviction, and ordered a new trial on the grounds that the trial judge had let in too much prejudicial evidence against the church. Williams appealed to the state Supreme Court. Last week, the state’s highest court denied the district attorney’s petition, clearing the way for Lynn’s freedom.
After Lynn’s expected release, Williams will have to decide whether to retry the case. A spokesman for the district attorney, Cameron Kline, said his “office is currently reviewing the decision” by the state Supreme Court to figure out its next move.
Victims advocates have already weighed in with their opinion.
“The impending freedom of Msgr. William Lynn,” wrote David Clohessy, the national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, “will no doubt feel like yet another blow to hundreds of wounded Philly-area abuse victims and thousands of betrayed Philly-area Catholics.
“No matter how uphill it might seem, we hope prosecutors seek a new trial,” he wrote.
Clohessy urged the district attorney to “vigorously [pursue] those who act recklessly, callously and deceitfully with kids’ safety.”
There are several reasons, however, why Williams might want to avoid a retrial of Lynn. Despite the reversal of his conviction, the 65-year-old monsignor has already paid the price for the crime he was convicted of, and then some. Lynn has served 33 months of his minimum 36-month sentence, plus 18 months of house arrest. He’s already been granted parole, effective in October.
So even if he is convicted again, legally, Lynn can suffer no further punishment.
Matt Rourke, File/AP
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams speaks during a Dec. 30, 2013 news conference on the case of Msgr. William Lynn, who is expected to be go free on Tuesday. Williams will have to decide whether Lynn will be prosecuted anew.
CREDIBILITY ISSUES
There are also some serious problems with the district attorney’s case that might make a retrial risky business. The alleged victim, whose real name is Daniel Gallagher, is a 28-year-old former heroin addict and admitted drug dealer who’s been arrested a half-dozen times for drugs and retail theft, and been in and out of 28 different drug rehabs, hospitals and clinics. Gallagher, whose identity was divulged during a subsequent civil case against the archdiocese, also carries with him a long list of credibility problems.
Gallagher originally claimed that during the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 school years, when he was a 10- and 11-year-old altar boy at St. Jerome’s parish in the Holme Circle section of Northeast Philadelphia, he was raped in three separate attacks by two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher. He gave lurid but wildly varying accounts of his alleged abuse to authorities.
“It’s hard to find a less credible victim of sexual abuse than him. That said, his testimony has already convicted four people.” – Alan J. Tauber, Lynn defense attorney, on "Billy Doe"
Gallagher initially told two archdiocese social workers that the first priest who attacked him, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, locked the doors of the sacristy after a 6:30 a.m. Mass, plied the boy with sacramental wine, and then proceeded to anally rape him for five brutal hours. After it was over, Gallagher claimed the priest threatened to kill him if he told anybody about it.
But when Gallagher retold his story to the police, Gallagher said he and the priest engaged in oral sex and mutual masturbation, and that it was Gallagher who threatened to kill the priest if he ever came near him again.
In the second attack, Gallagher claimed to the social workers that Father Avery “punched him in the head,” and when he woke up, he was naked and tied up with altar sashes. Gallagher claimed that during the attack, the priest forced him to suck blood off of the priest’s penis, and threatened that if he told anybody, the priest would “hang him from his balls and kill him slowly.” Gallagher also claimed that the anal attack was so brutal he “bled for a week.”
But when Gallagher was interviewed by police, he dropped from his account all of those details, including the punch to the head, the anal sex, the business about being tied up with altar sashes, as well as the story about the priest forcing him to suck blood.
Instead, Gallagher claimed he’d engaged in mutual masturbation and oral sex with Avery, and that in a subsequent attack, the priest forced Gallagher to perform a striptease.
In the third attack, Gallagher told social workers that Bernard Shero, his sixth-grade teacher, had punched him in the face and wrapped a seatbelt around his neck before raping him in the back seat of a car. But when Gallagher was interviewed by police and the grand jury, he dropped from his account the punch in the face, and the seatbelt wrapped around his neck.
Gallagher also gave three different locations for the alleged rape by Shero – in the classroom, in a car parked in a parking lot and in a car in a park in broad daylight. One defense lawyer, Michael J. McGovern, described Gallagher as a “walking, talking personification of reasonable doubt.”
The attacks, if they ever happened, went unnoticed at the time by any school or church official, as well as Gallagher’s father, a Philadelphia police sergeant, Gallagher’s mother, a registered nurse, and Gallagher’s older brother, who was also an altar boy at St. Jerome’s.
Source/Google Maps
Monsignor William Lynn has served all but three months of his minimum 36-month sentence, plus 18 months of house arrest. He has been granted parole, effective in October. He is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution – Waymart, in northeast Pennsylvania, above.
'PARANOID' AND 'DELUSIONAL'
There are many people who don’t believe Danny Gallagher.
They include Dr. Stephen Mechanick, a forensic psychiatrist who examined the former altar boy for three hours on Oct. 9, 2015, and wrote a report stating that Gallagher had admitted to Mechanick that he had previously lied to his drug counselors about being an emergency medical technician and a professional surfer. Gallagher, according to Mechanick, also provided “conflicting and unreliable information” about his history of substance abuse, his psychiatric history and medical background.
In his report, Mechanick described Gallagher as “paranoid,” “manipulative and self-serving,” as well as “delusional.”
The state Superior Court ruled the admission of 21 supplemental cases of sex abuse as evidence against Lynn was abuse of discretion. The cases dated back to 1948, before Lynn was born, and took up at least 25 days of the 32-day trial.
Mechanick’s opinions may not be admissible at any retrial of Msgr. Lynn. But a more serious problem for the prosecution is the testimony of the former lead investigator in the case, retired Detective Joseph Walsh.
In a civil deposition on Jan. 29, 2015, the retired detective expressed doubts about the credibility of the alleged victim. In the deposition, Walsh stated that he repeatedly questioned Gallagher about nine factual discrepancies in his story. And Gallagher’s response, according to Walsh, was to sit and say nothing. Or claim he was high on drugs. Or tell a different story.
“Detective Walsh would be a phenomenal witness for the defense,” said Alan J. Tauber, one of Lynn’s defense attorneys at the monsignor’s original trial. About Gallagher, Tauber said, “It’s hard to find a less credible victim of sexual abuse than him. That said, his testimony has already convicted four people.”
But to complicate the plot, Avery, the abusive priest who pleaded guilty, has publicly recanted. On Jan. 17, 2013, Avery testified in court that he never met Gallagher and never touched him. At the time of his plea bargain, Avery testified, he was 69 years old, and if convicted, he faced a prison sentence of more than 20 years.
So, Avery testified, he took a plea bargain of 2½ to 5 years for only one reason: “I did not want to die in prison.”
Shero is still in jail, serving a sentence of 8 to 16 years, but has hired a new appeals lawyer. There can be no further appeals, however, for Engelhardt, who died in prison in November 2014 while the members of his religious order, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, were still proclaiming his innocence.
Gallagher’s civil suit against the archdiocese was settled last year, a month before the historic visit of Pope Francis to Philadelphia, according to sources, for $5 million.
A CONVICTION REVERSED
If Lynn is retried, Tauber thinks the $5 million civil award would have to be disclosed to a criminal jury.
“That’s his motive to lie,” Tauber said.
Although Williams could declare victory and move on, Tauber predicts the district attorney will retry the case.
“I think it was too public a case for him to walk away from,” Tauber said.
In the past, Seth Williams has said about as much. Last December, after Lynn’s conviction was reversed, Williams stated at a press conference that he was “fully committed” to retrying the case.
The bail hearing, set for 10 a.m. Tuesday, will be held before Common Pleas Court Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright at the Criminal Justice Center in Center City. Lynn will be transported from the State Correctional Institute at Waymart, northeast of Scranton, where he used to work as the prison librarian, earning 19 cents an hour.
His conviction was reversed in December 2015, when a panel of three Superior Court judges ruled that the trial court had “abused its discretion” by allowing 21 supplemental cases of sex abuse to be admitted as evidence against Lynn. The prosecution had introduced the supplemental cases to show a pattern of abusive behavior by priests and cover-ups by the archdiocese.
But the 21 supplemental cases dated back to 1948, three years before the 65-year-old Lynn was born, and took up at least 25 days of the 32-day trial. In an appeal brief, Lynn's lawyers argued that the prosecution "introduced these files to put on trial the entire Archdiocese of Philadelphia, hoping to convict [Lynn] by proxy for the sins of the entire church."
The Superior Court judges agreed, ruling that the "probative value" of the supplemental cases "did not outweigh its potential for unfair prejudice.”
So if there is a retrial, the prosecution won’t be able to bring in all those past cases as evidence.
“At least if we have another trial, it will be a fair trial,” said Thomas A. Bergstrom, Lynn’s lawyer.
But as to the issue of whether there will be a retrial, Bergstrom said, “That’s up to the D.A.”
Ralph Cipriano
Thursday, July 28, 2016
St. James’ Weekly Collection for July 2016
July 31, 2016
July 24, 2016
No change in pledges
July 17, 2016
This Stewardship Project will be ending this month.
July 10, 2016
Two additional pledges; $261 additional pledged
July 3, 2016
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
St. James Weekly collections for weekend of June 5, 2016
Two additional pledges; Total dollars pledged increased $40.oo
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