Laity Response
Texas Rangers is on it. How about the murdered priest buried in a shallow grave near South Padre Island?
“The district attorney’s office from nearby Montgomery County, the Conroe Police Department (Conroe is where the alleged abuse happened) and the Texas Rangers all took part in the raid. Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon said at a press conference Wednesday that “federal agencies” were at the scene as well.
Speaking to reporters outside the archdiocese’s offices, the Republican district attorney said the Rangers and the federal agencies were there in case they uncovered evidence for crimes outside of Montgomery County.
“Our investigation is focused on ‘Fr. Manny,”’ Ligon said. “Anywhere it goes after that, we’d turn over to the Texas Rangers or we’d turn over to the appropriate federal agency.”
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“The district attorney noted the archdiocese did not hand over boxes of documents to law enforcement on day one, and that prosecutors had to work with “a host of attorneys.” He commented, “Having to go through the attorneys, I understand it, as an attorney myself. It’s not the type of cooperation that I would hope for, but it’s the type of cooperation that I would expect with a sophisticated company.”
This is why the raid is not about some old story 2 decades ago. Ongoing cover ups. That innocent priests get ensnared is a direct result of the prelates behavior. “He recently served as the pastor at St. John Fisher Catholic Church in Richmond and the episcopal vicar for Hispanics.” https://www.yourconroenews.com/neighborhood/moco/news/article/Montgomery-County-law-enforcement-raid-rehab-13241334.php
“The episcopate, whose action was so prompt and concordant at Nicæa on the rise of Arianism, did not, as a class or order of men, play a good part in the troubles consequent upon the Council; and the laity did. The Catholic people, in the length and breadth of Christendom, were the obstinate champions of Catholic truth, and the bishops were not.”
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/note5.html
“Dearden, Bernardin and McCarrick did not begin their careers as towering spiritual madmen, but they ended that way.
Little by little, they advanced, amassing more authority and influence as they progressed, and eventually reaching a tipping point where they themselves could begin setting the agenda. Imagine had any of them been able to have been stopped years prior to their destructive wielding of power.
We know with a high degree of certainty that most bishops and few priests are ever going to pose that challenge — it’s just not done among the clergy, although it used to be and should be again.
But in the meantime, the laity must do it.”
https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vortex-the-players
There is difference between invincible ignorance and willful ignorance. “Perhaps if someone, or some body within the Church—perhaps the Knights, perhaps a diocesan council led by layfolk of varying gifts—had asked such questions, Bishops responsible for covering up the behavior and shifting bad priests to new fields might have reconsidered taking the worldly advice of disinterested psychologists and removed bad shepherds from the pastures altogether.”
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“Making an address to the Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus in June of 1972, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said something most relevant to our times:
Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and your religious act like religious.”
Ignorance is not an option. “Leviticus 4:3: When the high priest sins, he makes everyone else guilty, too.” http://theanchoress.com/bishop-sheens-prophetic-call-to-the-laity/
