The Matt Walsh Show - August 15, 2018


Ep. 84 - It's Time for the Church to Ruthlessly Root Out Sex Abusers


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

171.35136

Word Count

3,424

Sentence Count

213

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

19


Summary

A grand jury report about the sexual abuse of children by priests in Pennsylvania was released yesterday. Over 300 predator priests are named in the document. The specifics are graphic and horrifying. They do involve, of course, violent sexual assault and rape by multiple priests in the same parish. And as we have seen in so many other cases, the opportunity for abuse was furnished by bishops and other church officials who either looked the other way or actively covered up the crimes.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 A grand jury report about the sex abuse of children by priests in Pennsylvania was released
00:00:05.460 yesterday. Over 300 predator priests are named in the document. The specifics are graphic and
00:00:11.500 horrifying. They do involve, of course, violent sexual assault and rape, and sometimes the
00:00:17.320 coordinated abuse of children by multiple priests in the same parish. And of course, the opportunity
00:00:22.780 for abuse, as we have seen in so many other cases, was furnished by bishops and other church
00:00:28.460 officials who either looked the other way or actively helped to cover up the crimes. Now,
00:00:34.380 I want to mention just a few specific details from this report of specific crimes that occurred
00:00:40.540 against children. And of course, I should warn you that these details are extremely, extremely
00:00:45.500 disturbing and graphic and certainly not suitable to listen to if you have kids in the room right
00:00:51.180 now. So if that's the case, then turn off the video or the podcast, come back to it later.
00:00:54.840 But I do think that we should look at a few of these examples just so we understand how
00:01:00.960 evil this is. All right. In one case, a boy was forced to stand naked, posing like Christ
00:01:11.060 on the cross, while priests took pictures of him and added them to a collection of child pornography
00:01:17.880 that they produced and distributed on the campus of the church.
00:01:24.080 That quite literally sounds like something from a horror movie. It sounds like something from...
00:01:30.800 It sounds made up. It sounds fictional, but it's not.
00:01:33.780 But it gets worse. These priests would actually mark boys who are being groomed for abuse and who
00:01:47.520 are desensitized to abuse and thus are easier to abuse. They would mark them so that other predator
00:01:53.920 priests would know and could then abuse them as well. And the way that they would mark them is that
00:01:57.860 they would give these boys a gift of a gold crucifix to wear around their necks. And if other predator
00:02:03.920 priests saw that gold crucifix around the necks of a boy, they knew that he would be vulnerable to
00:02:11.360 abuse. In another case, a priest raped a young girl and then arranged for her to get an abortion.
00:02:18.000 And his bishop heard about the situation and wrote a letter of condolence
00:02:21.540 to the priest who had raped the girl. In another case, a priest molested a boy over the course of
00:02:30.120 a couple of years. He admitted to church officials that he had engaged in naked, quote, horseplay
00:02:39.780 with the boy. And yet he was sent for treatment for a few months, and then he was allowed to continue
00:02:48.020 in ministry for seven more years. In another case, a priest raped a little girl while he was visiting
00:02:55.100 her in the hospital after she had gotten her tonsils removed. He visited her in the hospital and raped
00:03:00.960 her. In another case, a priest forced a boy to give him oral sex and then afterwards washed the boy's
00:03:09.840 mouth out with holy water to, quote, purify him. In another case, a priest molested a 12-year-old boy,
00:03:15.900 admitted his crime to a church official, but the diocese ruled that the abuse wouldn't, quote,
00:03:22.360 necessarily be a horrendous trauma to the victim. And so they didn't do anything else. And on and on
00:03:29.540 and on. There are over a thousand victims in this report, so there are many more cases like this.
00:03:34.120 But I just, I physically can't read any more than that. And I doubt you could physically listen to
00:03:40.200 any more than that. The point that I'm trying to get to here, and I think you'll understand now,
00:03:44.640 this is demonic, straight up. This is Satanism. What else can you call it? There is a virus in
00:03:53.360 the Catholic Church, and it has to be rooted out and crushed. There has to be a purge in the church.
00:04:02.020 And I don't think that purge has really happened yet. I think very clearly it has not. And I don't
00:04:08.260 see any way for this purge to happen unless it is ruthless and brutal and uncompromising.
00:04:15.220 If we have to err on the side of being merciless or being tolerant, then I think we need to err on
00:04:22.960 the side of being merciless every time when it comes to this. Now, unfortunately, the laws in our
00:04:29.760 country won't allow us to take these priests and hang them, which they so richly deserve.
00:04:36.020 Even less will it allow us to burn them at the stake, which I think would be poetic in many ways.
00:04:41.980 But we can't do that. But we can expose them, we can shame them, rebuke them, and hopefully they can
00:04:47.800 be locked in cages for the rest of their mortal lives. See, you know, I think Catholics are tempted
00:04:54.500 to believe that the scandals are kind of behind us, and that that was then, this is now. But
00:05:00.160 the Cardinal McCarrick case, which is just coming out in the last few weeks, and now this in
00:05:04.680 Pennsylvania, I think they clearly show that this is not behind us. The cancer has not been completely
00:05:09.760 removed. And what happens when you don't completely remove a cancer? It grows back. So it must be
00:05:15.820 completely, totally removed. It has not been. And I think when you see the reluctance of most priests
00:05:22.960 and bishops to come forward, even now, and speak passionately and publicly against these crimes,
00:05:29.620 that yet again shows that the problem is not in the past, because the predators and the cowards
00:05:35.180 who aid and abed them remain. And so that's one thing, you know, the average Catholic goes to church,
00:05:41.280 they're not necessarily going to know if abuse is going on, they can't, it's not something they can
00:05:45.780 see for themselves, obviously, but they can see moral cowardice among their leaders, and there is a lot of it.
00:05:52.960 A lot in the American church. They can see that. And I think it's a pretty safe bet. As long as the
00:06:00.180 church is infected by these spineless, gutless cowards, as long as they are there, the predators
00:06:08.620 will remain as well. Because that is the environment in which the predators thrive. So what can be done
00:06:15.020 to root out this problem? Well, there are many steps that can and should be taken. I want to focus on
00:06:20.740 just three of them right now. Okay. The first step, as I've already argued, and I'll argue again,
00:06:25.780 homosexuals must be banned from the priesthood, no exception. They must be banned. I said this has to
00:06:32.960 be ruthless, brutal, uncompromising. And so that's one of those steps. Every homosexual priest, banned.
00:06:40.860 Now, I know that not every victim in Pennsylvania was a boy. I even mentioned a few cases where girls were
00:06:48.240 abused, but most of the victims were boys. And across the country, over the last several decades,
00:06:54.560 a vast majority have been boys. I've written in other places that the most reliable study that's
00:07:02.040 been done on this has shown that over 80% of the victims, over 80% are boys, which means that a vast
00:07:10.040 majority of the predators are males attracted to other males. Now, you can, if you want, you can come back
00:07:17.080 with silliness about how men who molest boys aren't gay. But I don't think that claim even warrants a
00:07:23.340 response because it is so idiotic. It is so contemptible. And it is contemptible because the
00:07:29.280 person who makes that claim knows what they're saying is stupid, yet they make it anyway in an
00:07:34.340 effort to prevent measures that could protect children from being raped. And so that's why they're
00:07:40.200 saying these are people who care more about protecting the LGBT community than they do about
00:07:47.740 stopping children from being raped. And there are a lot of people out there like that. And every
00:07:52.300 single person right now who might be trying to make a comment in the comment section saying something,
00:07:56.240 well, just because a man molests a boy, that doesn't mean he's gay. That's stupid. That's idiotic.
00:08:01.720 It's contemptible. You know it. You know what you're saying makes no sense. You damn well know
00:08:07.040 that a man who goes after a boy is gay. If a man is not gay, he's not going to be going after boys.
00:08:14.420 This is a very simple equation. There's no getting around it. It's very simple.
00:08:23.100 Do I think that every homosexual is a child molester? No. But here's the thing. We all have to
00:08:29.720 understand. Most child molesters in the church are gay. The vast majority are gay. That's a fact.
00:08:39.300 That's not my claim. That's not my argument. That's not my deduction. That's just empirically proven
00:08:45.920 fact. The only question now is whether or not we will do something about it. And we have to understand
00:08:53.620 the problem of homosexuals in the church goes beyond the abusers. This is, as I say,
00:08:59.320 an environment, a culture that has been constructed. There is an actual conspiracy in the church among
00:09:07.240 homosexual priests and bishops. A conspiracy. This is not the stuff of Hollywood. This is real. This is
00:09:13.960 actual conspiracy. Those who, if you haven't read into this, if you're not paying attention,
00:09:19.160 then you might not know this. But anyone who has read about it and has paid attention knows
00:09:22.480 that this is the case. The homosexuals in the priesthood conspire with each other to intimidate
00:09:31.340 and blackmail others into silence. That's what they do. And as I just read one example of it,
00:09:38.880 they even conspire with each other to coordinate their abuse of boys. Now, just for an example,
00:09:45.380 for an illustration of this, there was a sermon delivered by a Father Edwin Palka at a church in
00:09:51.760 Florida a few weeks ago. And this man, Father Palka, is one of the good and courageous priests.
00:09:58.580 And as a courageous priest, he is, I fear, in a very small minority in the American church.
00:10:03.920 But he actually got up in front of his congregation a few weeks ago. And I have this sermon because they
00:10:08.460 posted it in the bulletin, in their church bulletin, which was then put online. He got up in front of
00:10:13.260 his congregation. And apparently, he's been doing a series of sermons on this. But he explained how
00:10:20.260 this works and how the actively homosexual priests and bishops operate. Now, I want to read just the
00:10:26.180 first couple of paragraphs of this to set it up, and then I'll summarize the rest of it. But so here's
00:10:32.040 a little bit of what he said. He said, one question that was asked after last week's homily was,
00:10:37.460 why don't good priests and good bishops blow the whistle on the abuse of priests and bishops?
00:10:41.800 Many people still don't, and I believe most priests still don't, understand just how evil the active
00:10:48.760 homosexual or homosexual activist priests and bishops are. Not understanding the extent of their
00:10:55.260 depravity and wrongly thinking that they are simply normal men who just struggle with their sexual
00:10:59.880 desires and sometimes might fail to remain chaste, but are really, truly repentant when it happens and
00:11:04.340 strive to confess their sins and do penance. They cannot possibly grasp the hellish depths to which
00:11:10.720 the active homosexual clergy will go, to persecute, lambaste, punish, humiliate, and blackmail anyone
00:11:17.760 who stands in their way or threatens their way of life. Let me be clear. The active homosexual
00:11:22.940 priests and bishops treat their sexual mortal sin as if it is a good, and a God-given good at that,
00:11:28.940 if they even believe in God, something of which I am very doubtful, at least in the Catholic
00:11:32.320 understanding of who God is. Nay, more than a good, they are convinced that it is the good to be able
00:11:38.020 to go to any, repeat any length, to force others to engage in it, to accept it, or to, at the very
00:11:43.120 least, ignore it and pretend that it doesn't exist or that it's not harmful enough to mention or try to
00:11:47.740 eradicate. They do not struggle with their disordered sexual desires, as so many others do, but rather
00:11:52.740 they revel in them. With that as my premise, let me explain why few good priests and bishops will
00:11:58.660 openly challenge their brother priests and bishops when it comes to this particular sin, and I won't
00:12:03.660 read the rest of it verbatim, but he explains, he explains, he gives just one example of how this
00:12:08.860 happens. He explains that when men enter into the seminary, as part of this process, they are asked to
00:12:21.440 reveal a lot of very personal information about themselves, which makes sense. It makes sense that,
00:12:27.660 and this, this is, this is one thing that the church should be doing. It's like, we need to know
00:12:31.360 about this man who's coming in and wants to be a priest, and especially because he's about to take
00:12:35.840 on, he's about, he's about to take on a huge amount of responsibility. He's going to be sacrificing quite
00:12:40.620 a bit, theoretically, and so they, they need to know about it. So he tells them a lot about their
00:12:48.180 information, a lot of information about, about, about themselves, and this information is kept in a file.
00:12:53.080 Now, ostensibly, that file is, is there for a good reason, so that he can be, you know, so that his
00:12:58.440 superiors can, can help him and, and guide him, and they know what he struggles with, so they can kind of
00:13:04.240 look out for him. That's the idea behind this file. And that file can grow as he continues to struggle
00:13:09.440 with things, and he makes mistakes, and whatever, things end up in the file. Well, now you see how, what can
00:13:15.680 obviously happen here. Now there is a file of very personal information about this man, and the
00:13:23.680 homosexual priests and bishops can use that file to blackmail him. What's more, he gives one
00:13:29.760 basically theoretical example, but an example that represents things that actually happens. So he, he
00:13:37.600 mentions, um, one thing that, um, that the active homosexual bishops can do to use this file against
00:13:46.320 the priest. He mentions, okay, well, in fact, let me just read it. He says, suppose a priest file reveals
00:13:51.360 that as a teen, he was sexually abused by an adult male. As a result of this formative abuse, he struggled
00:13:57.440 with homosexual desires as an adolescent and into his early adulthood, but always remained chaste. Once
00:14:03.480 ordained as a priest, he spoke out fervently against the acceptance and promotion and legalization
00:14:07.580 of homosexual activity and other sexual sins. His active homosexual bishop, knowing his past,
00:14:13.100 makes him the Boy Scout chaplain, where he will be working closely with the bishop's hand-picked
00:14:18.560 and openly active homosexual lay diocesan scout leaders, hoping and even encouraging him to finally
00:14:25.520 fall to his boyhood abuse-induced homosexual desires and sexually abuse one or more of the scouts.
00:14:31.340 While a continual perpetuation of this sin is most greatly desired by the homosexual bishop,
00:14:36.220 even one close call is enough for a lifetime of blackmail. So you see what happens. They know
00:14:43.260 the darkest secrets of these priests so they can use that against them to try to induce them into sin
00:14:49.960 so they can then use it against them. This is a priest getting up in front of his congregation and
00:14:55.680 revealing this. He has nothing, let me just tell you, he has nothing to gain by saying this,
00:15:01.520 nothing at all. He is putting everything on the line by saying this. So there is no reason to doubt him
00:15:07.120 whatsoever. He has risked quite a bit. And this is in line with what other priests have in moments of
00:15:12.400 candor said, whether anonymously or speaking out publicly, which rarely happens. But when they do,
00:15:17.480 and they're honest about it, these are the kinds of stories we heard. There's another example,
00:15:22.380 maybe it was from this priest or another that I recently heard, where priests who are actively gay
00:15:31.100 and who have abused boys, they will seek out heterosexual priests for confession. And so they'll
00:15:40.780 go, even though they're not really repenting at all, but they'll go to confession and they will tell
00:15:49.280 all of their horrible crimes to this heterosexual priest, knowing, and the only reason they do it
00:15:55.140 is so that they know that now that priest can't go and tell anyone. Because according to church law,
00:16:01.100 there is a seal in the confessional and whatever you say in the confessional, the priest cannot ever
00:16:06.400 repeat it to anyone, which is a rule that of course makes a lot of sense. Otherwise nobody would ever go
00:16:11.200 to confession. But these homosexual priests will use that. They will use it like a weapon.
00:16:19.280 To seal other priests into silence. So these are the kinds of things that happen. Again,
00:16:23.520 it is just demonic. Number two, what else can be done? The good priests and bishops have to come out
00:16:30.840 and rebuke with righteous fury. Okay, they have to be heroes like Father Palka. And even with,
00:16:38.500 and it's understood now that some of them are being blackmailed, they're being pressured,
00:16:42.060 horrible things are happening. But still, they need to come out like Father Palka and be heroes,
00:16:48.220 be courageous. Even if it means they're going to be personally destroyed because their own secrets
00:16:52.800 are going to come out. At a certain point, you got to do the right thing. And, you know,
00:16:57.800 these various bishops who have issued statements about how sad they are, how grief stricken,
00:17:03.940 that's not going to do. Cardinal Worrell, who was bishop in Pittsburgh while these things were
00:17:09.140 happening, and is guilty of coverups himself, he came out with a very limp-wristed kind of lament
00:17:14.500 about the tragedy of sexual abuse. But no, this is not a tragedy. It is wickedness straight from the
00:17:21.900 pit of hell. That's what it is. It's not just a tragedy. It is wickedness from hell. And that's
00:17:27.820 what needs to be said. We don't want to hear about tragedies anymore. We don't want to hear about your
00:17:34.780 sadness. We want to hear you call down the wrath of God on the perpetrators. That's what we want to
00:17:42.400 hear. We want to hear fire and brimstone. We want you to show us, if you're a priest or a bishop,
00:17:49.260 we want you to show us that you are disgusted and enraged by what's going on. Or else we'll suspect
00:17:57.840 that you don't care. Or worse. I mean, I just don't, if you're a priest, how could you even,
00:18:05.760 how could you do anything but get up there on Sunday at the pulpit and just rail against this?
00:18:11.200 As I say, fire and brimstone, righteous anger. That's what's needed now. Nothing else will do.
00:18:19.380 Nothing else is going to solve it. And we have to name names. Because for every priest who raped a boy,
00:18:26.320 there could well be at least one more priest who knew about it and remained silent. And those priests
00:18:30.920 are guilty as well. I'd say they're as guilty as the actual rapist. Because cowardice is a moral evil.
00:18:39.360 And there has been quite a lot of that kind of evil. And that is the evil that, as I said, that is the
00:18:44.820 evil which creates kind of the foundation and the environment and the structure upon which these
00:18:51.300 other things happen. Third thing, last thing. The lay people in the church have to start to use the
00:19:00.080 power that they have. And they do have power. They have power because they have money. So churches that
00:19:06.360 have been involved in abuse and cover-up must be starved of money by the parishioners unless and
00:19:12.920 until the church can come forward, beg for forgiveness, rebuke those who committed those sins
00:19:19.160 and those acts, and rebuke them convincingly, and then clearly outline what steps they have taken to
00:19:26.240 rectify the problem. There has to be full transparency and full accountability. Any church that will not be
00:19:33.400 fully transparent and fully accountable when it comes to this issue deserves to die. And the faithful
00:19:39.440 will just have to drive a bit further to a different church. So I think those are three steps that can and
00:19:44.140 should be taken. I'm under no illusion that any of them actually will be taken.
00:19:48.060 But they need to be. And if they are not, then I don't see how this problem gets solved.
00:19:56.140 Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for watching. Godspeed.