WHY DO RIGHT WING PARENTS ALLOW FAKE "HOLY MEN" TO RAPE THEIR CHILDREN ?

Probably no one in America hasn't spent at least some time over the past couple years thinking about what makes priests and ministers sexually molest children. As diocese after diocese around America was swamped in excruciating stories of trusted and respected supposed "men of God" having sex with children in their spiritual care, people started wondering... why? What makes a man who ostensibly dedicated his life to "God" (and all that that means) take thwart one of the most crucial and iron-clad of all human societies' mores (right up there with prohibitions against cannibalism): thou shalt not rape small children. The Board of Directors of the hugely profitable and longest running corporate business in world history, the Roman Catholic Church based in the Vatican City enclave of Rome, would like people-- especially donors-- to think the problem is an aberration or that gays sneaking into the priesthood is what this is all about. But it isn't an aberration and it isn't about gay priests. It's about the kind of people who decide on an avocation in the priesthood.

When I was just a little boy (as the song goes, more or less), I figured the whole priest thing out. I was thinking about cavemen and what the self-selection was for shaman. Everybody had to work their ass off in extremely dangerous conditions (saber-toothed tigers, for example, had no reason to know about the theory of Dominion yet). I mean you were up at the break of day, hunting and gathering and avoiding beasts to scrape together a meager existence. But there's one guy in the group who is lazy as hell, doesn't like taking his chances outrunning hungry things with sharp teeth who want to eat him and can't really throw a spear straight for shit anyway. But he does like to eat as much as anyone else-- maybe a little more-- and he's pretty smart. Pretty soon he's figured out the whole "god" business and he's not leaving the cave but getting a portion of everyone else's hunted and gathered stuff and he's telling 'em stories about the power of this and that and the other and making it all make sense to the dumber cave men.

Pretty soon his descendants are rich and powerful and running around in fancy dresses, smooth hands and fat bellies with actual accumulated wealth and boucoup power. So much wealth and so much power that they can flaunt every law ever dreamed up-- and they seem to like sex with kiddies more than cannibalism. What a scam for so many for so long.

This month the MINNEAPOLIS CITY PAGES ran a fascinating story on one extreme right-wing authoritarian priest/child molester and how his parishioners (and victims) reacted to his deprecations. Bruce Rubsenstein's piece, "The Sins of the Father," focused on "Father" Ryan Erickson of Hudson, Wisconsin. Erickson, although an alcoholic, was through and through a traditionalist, a big fan of the rituals, costumes and hocus pocus... a real drama queen when it came to the ceremonies and all that. He was also a gun-totin' (pistol in the waistband) right-wing political extremist, a vote-Bush-or-rot-in-eternal-damnation kind of guy.

Rubsenstein tells us not all the congregants were equally enthused by Erickson's performance. "The parishioners who were wowed by his histrionics became known as 'kneelers,' because they knelt during Consecration. The 'standers' were either uncomfortable with his act or oblivious. Mostly they suffered in silence or opted to attend another church. The parish's spiritual life, they believed, was being hijacked by the born-agains, people they wearily referred to as 'holy rollers,' in reference to the way they demonstrated their fervor. Alternately, they called them 'chirpers,' after a retreat group that Father Ryan led named CRHP--Christ Renews His Parish."

The MINNEAPOLIS CITY PAGES story is also the story of one of the "standers," 39-year-old Dan O'Connell, a member of one of Hudson's most prominent families and the owner of O'Connell Funeral Home. And about James Ellison, O'Connell's 22 year old intern. Both were murdered, shot in cold blood (by guess who). Last week, over 2 years after the murders, the story reports "St. Croix County Attorney Eric Johnson is presenting evidence connecting Father Ryan to the killing. And Johnson will confirm what has long been whispered by Erickson's harshest critics: that the crusading sexual moralist had been engaging in the same crimes against children that have devastated the Catholic church in recent years." But the gun-totin', hard drinkin', Bush-campaignin', child molestin' right-wing asshole already committed suicide so he's already rotting in the hell he threatened anyone he didn't like with.

Rubsenstein reports that "On December 19, 2004, he hung himself in the hallway of the church where he'd been reassigned, St. Mary's of the Seven Dolors, in Hurley, Wisconsin. His suicide came the day after investigators executed a search warrant on his living quarters, looking for evidence that would connect him to the murders. What they discovered, according to a front-page PIONEER PRESS article, is child pornography on his computer, some of it involving bondage.

When Erickson was still in his early teens, his family moved and left him in the "care" of a Catholic priest. People who remember him from those days remember him as "obviously gay" and obsessed with becoming a priest. By the time he was 18 parents were careful to not leave him alone with young children-- although everyone knew girls were perfectly safe around him. He was already drinking himself into oblivion at 18.

Once he made it into the seminary, his fellow students, according to Rubsenstein "referred to him as 'the Monsignor' because of his ultra-conservative religious views." He was ordained in June 2000-- "a baby-faced, bespectacled young man with a dour expression. He came to St. Patrick's with some firm beliefs: that levity had no place in sermons; that Mass should be celebrated at least partly in Latin; that it was his calling to lecture parishioners, especially children, about mortal sin... One of Father Ryan's chores at St. Patrick's School was sex education. His conservative supporters liked the priest's black-and-white approach to the topic, but other parents were alarmed by what he told their kids. Mortal sins and the temptation to commit them were his major concern. Abortion was high on his list, but it was trumped by masturbation, which obsessed him."

He used to e-mail the parishioners with his crazed thoughts and the crazed among the parishioners ate it up. One that Rubsenstein found for his readers was about the church-going Catholic ladies who came to mass. "Even Sunday Mass is not safe from the immodest dress of some devils. They come to read, give out Holy Communion, etc....looking like an advertisement. Their immodest dress says to all present: 'I'm easy! Please go home and masturbate to my beautiful body.' The sad thing is that some do." Erickson was clearly out of his mind but the Stepford wing-nuts in town didn't seem to notice. I mean this IS the kind of world Limbaugh and Hannity and Dobson and Phelps paints for them anyway. Still, as Rubsenstein puts it, "nobody doubted that he got his details about rampant onanism firsthand. Father Ryan aggressively sought confessional visitors. He instructed the students at St. Patrick's school to come to him for confession, and got pushy if they were reluctant. 'Why haven't you seen Father this week?' he asked several junior high students." And the conservative loons in town demanded that Erickson take a larger role at the school, although the school's principal and some of the parents were doubting whether he should be there at all, or allowed anywhere near their children.

He was 100% into all the pre-Vatican II stuff and he was trying to pass all that discredited, bigoted crap on to the kids. The church was split. Rubsenstein introduces us to a woman who identifies herself as an Erickson supporter, Patricia German. She "argues that the split came from some congregants' resistance to the hard truths that he taught. 'I know that Father's frank discussion of mortal sin offended some people, but he simply preached the real teachings of the church,' German says. 'They'd been hearing a watered-down version of the faith until he came. He taught the true faith and it made some of them uncomfortable. I'd say the parish was about 10 percent with us, 10 percent opposed, and the rest pretty uninvolved.' A woman who was on the other side of the rift questions whether it's that simple. She uses the example of the kneeling/standing controversy. 'Bishops have a wide latitude concerning what they can do in the diocese, and Father Peter, with the Bishop's tacit approval, allowed people to stand during Consecration, because the ones in back couldn't see if they knelt. It was a minor thing, a matter of convenience, but it became this huge, divisive argument--the kneelers versus the standers.' Father Ryan's critics said he wanted to drag their church back to the 12th century (although my friend Danny would protest how unfair that is to Thomas Aquinas, Abelard etc) but he was quite modern in one respect: He had an extensive e-mail list, and used it to exhort the faithful and chastise the infidels. In turn, they demanded militant action against abortion and gay sex, calling public opposition to such sins a Catholic's religious duty. During the run-up to the 2004 election they distributed leaflets in the church parking lot demanding that Catholics vote for George Bush, another duty of the faith. Patricia German's husband, Jerry, says that Father Ryan brought something to St. Patrick's that had been sorely lacking until then: passion. 'He did everything passionately,' he says. 'Preach, hunt, fish, drink beer. He just reeked passion.'" And booze.

The wing-nuts defended their alcoholic child-molesting little fascist priest. One says: "People turned it into something divisive. He taught the truth, and there are a lot of people who don't want to hear it. He stuck to his guns. The truth is the truth and there is no variance." Sounds like what you get from Limbaugh and Robsertson and O'Reilly day in and day out, something these clueless wing-nuts just eat up. The defender continues: "For example, looking at pornographic material is a sin. Well, there are a lot of men in our parish who look at girlie magazines, and they don't want to hear that. Abortion is a sin. Masturbation is a sin. They don't want to hear that, because they've had to go through it, or maybe they're for it." And when Limbaugh gets caught using drugs and Roberston gets caught stealing from his contributors and calling for assassinations and when O'Reilly goes beyond just writing pornography into... well you know... all the loofah stuff... and when Father Ryan gets drunk and rapes an 8 year old boy and shoots 2 people?

A partisan right-wing newspaper, RENEW AMERICA, edited by anti-abortion fanatic Matt C. Abbott, frequently defends Erickson. An avatar of the macho right, they deny Erickson was gay at all. And his followers in town see it the same way. One told Rubsenstein that being gay-- not just gay sex-- "is a sin. It's a choice. That's been proven. I've read studies on it." She explains that people who aren't attracted to the opposite sex may be meant to be celibate. She finds rumors that Erickson was gay laughable. "He was a very holy priest," she says. When Rubsenstein asks her how she can be sure of the priest's sexual orientation, the clueless nitwit replies "I'm a mom and you just know these things. My kids were very close with Father Ryan. They went to his night prayers, they fished with him, they hung out with him. He was at our house all the time. When a priest comes into your life like that and he's young, you think, 'Oh-oh, better be careful.' You watch for signs, you pop into rooms, and never even once did I come close to thinking there was even a possibility."

Interestingly-- though only an imbecile would expect otherwise-- Rubsenstein points out that "some of the child victims came from conservative Catholic families that were reluctant to believe Father Ryan had abused their kids. They impeded the investigation, and until it was complete, investigators couldn't fill in the blanks concerning Father Ryan's motive for murdering O'Connell." As some of the victims came of age they stopped listening to their horrible fascist parents' criminal blandishments to protect the priest and started talking to law enforcement officials about Erickson feeding them alcohol and sexually molesting them in the rectory.

But, the wing-nuts still refuse to accept the truth about Erickson (or themselves, of course). I mean how do parents face themselves when their own ideological bigotry has led to their son being fondled by the parish priest? According to Rubsenstein, "when pressed, these people will admit that 'the hanged priest' hung himself, but they also hint at a mysterious martyrdom. In death as in life he remains a divisive figure, either murdered or hounded to an early grave by demonic liberals according to his devotees; dead of a self-imposed penance after a subconsciously compelled confession according to his critics. One of his followers, Darla Meyers, has become a regular on right-wing talk shows and the far-right print media, where she frequently invokes the memory of Father Ryan during her discussions of abortion. Meyers is the gatekeeper of a secretive website devoted to Erickson's memory. Anyone can get to the home page at fatherryanerickson.com, but only the chosen make it into the messages section, where Erickson's disciples share their memories of the man who had such an impact on their lives. Requests for a password to the inner sanctum are answered with a query: 'How did you know Father? Journalists are not welcome.' Typical of the rabid rightists who still adhere to their murderer/molester priest is Helen Shaw. Her attitude is very representative of many of his delusional supporters. "She's aware," writes Rubsenstein, "that he suffered from depression and she believes he was pushed into committing suicide. 'I know that they questioned him about sexual acts with kids and I think when they did that his heart about fell through the floor,' she says. 'This man loved kids.' She doesn't believe Erickson committed any of the transgressions attributed to him. Amid all the newspaper coverage and the lurid details, has she ever questioned the holiness of the hanged priest? 'No,' she says, 'never.'

Today Associated Press reported that "Newly released records of sex abuse claims against 126 priests that are at the core of hundreds of lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles show that church officials for decades moved accused priests between counseling and new assignments." Although the archdiocese worked hard to keep the documents sealed, they were released today and show a pattern of abuse with the church hierarchy protecting serial child molesters. Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has led the archdiocese since 1985, is the head of a pernicious crime family who should spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. So far he has not been arrested.