Book Review
Amchurch Comes Out is searing indictment of U.S.bishops

By Diane Levero

By now, everyone who has not been living in a cave is familiar with the scandal of pedophile Catholic priests in the United States. It's a horrifying, sordid and disgusting subject which most of us, myself included, would rather not think about.

And yet we must, if we care at all about our children and about the Catholic Church in America.

In Amchurch Comes Out: The U.S. Bishops, Pedophile Scandals and the Homosexual Agenda, Paul Likoudis, news editor of the conservative Catholic newspaper, The Wanderer, sums up the knowledge gained from his 15 years of reporting on sexual abuse cases in the priesthood.

Between 1957 and 1966, says Likoudis, "[H]omosexuals, pedophiles and other perverse persons in the priesthood rose to prominence in the Church, certainly in the United States and Canada, and began carefully plotting and promoting a sexual liberation agenda that would take Catholics by surprise . . ."

As a result, he charged, the standard operating procedure of the Catholic bishops for decades has been the recruitment of homosexual priests, the re-assignment of recidivist sexual molesters in the clergy from parish to parish and diocese to diocese, and a concerted strategy on the part of bishops to cover up clerical crimes.

The pedophile scandal is only the more visible and blatant evidence of the efforts of this powerful coterie of bishops and others within the Church who are striving to destroy her from the inside, says Likoudis.

These are grave charges indeed, but Likoudis documents them with case after depressing case, including:<

• The 1989 lawsuit brought against Honolulu Bishop Joseph Ferrario by David Figueroa charging him with sexual abuse. Ferrario excommunicated six Catholics who criticized him for this alleged behavior as well as for his recruitment of homosexual priests and many other actions.
• Lawsuits in Washington, D.C., in 1991 charging Fr. Thomas Cheblonski with multiple counts of sexual abuse, with Archbishop James Hickey and St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore as co-defendants.

  Cheblonski, dismissed from an Ohio seminary due to sexual problems, was subsequently accepted for the priesthood by Hickey in Washington.

• The 1996 lawsuit charging Fr. Rudy Kos and two other Dallas priests with sexual abuse, and naming the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) as a defendant.

  The case was notorious for revelations indicating that Church officials went out of their way to recruit and protect sexually deviant priests.

• The vigorous pushing of the gay agenda in schools and parishes by bishops such as Matthew Clark of Rochester, Howard Hubbard of Albany and Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton.
• The 1997 release by the Administrative Committee of the NCCB of the pastoral letter, Always Our Children, affirming their belief in the unscientific notion of homosexual "orientation" and advising parents of homosexual children to accept them as they are, even to the point of remaining silent on Church doctrine.
• The charging in 2001 of Fr. Kenneth Martin with molesting students while he was a lay teacher at Loyola Blakefield in Towson in the 1970s.

  Noting that Martin was the U.S. bishops' associate director of the Committee on the Liturgy, Likoudis proffered this as one of many examples of how homosexuals and pedophiles are driving liturgical "renewal" to change Catholics' understanding of the nature of the Church.

• The resignation in the 1990s of five bishops in the wake of sexual abuse scandals: Bishop J. Keith Symons of Palm Beach, Archbishops Robert Sanchez of Santa Fe and Eugene Marino of Atlanta, and Bishops Daniel Ryan of Springfield, Ill., and Patrick Ziemann of Santa Rosa.
• The remarkable role of Joseph Cardinal Ber- nardin in creating an "American Church" (Likoudis dubs it "Amchurch") that has become a trusted ally of all the various social, political and cultural forces promoting sexual libertinism.
• The intensive efforts by militant homosexuals, supported by many bishops, to promote homosexuality among America's Catholic schoolchildren.

Concludes Likoudis, "Homosexual activists have now thoroughly infiltrated the American Catholic Church, and are able to manipulate and use its institutions, resources and facilities to rapidly consolidate and extend their grip . . .

"The homosexual network in the Church continues to do irreparable damage by its influence in and control over liturgy, education, especially sex education, and social justice operations."

Serious remedial action is necessary to counter the "fundamentally corrupt" leadership in the Catholic Church, says Likoudis.

Concurring with Fr. Paul Shaughnessy. S.J., in the November, 2000, Catholic World Report, Likoudis recommends these actions:

1. A severe crackdown on miscreants by the Vatican.
2. An explicit policy by bishops forbidding the admission of homosexuals to seminaries.
3. The restoration of simplicity to priestly life.
4. Insistence by the lay faithful of high standards for their priests.

Amchurch Comes Out is available from The Wanderer. Phone 651-224-5733.