Will Eric Cantor Name The 7 Legion Of Christ Child Predators To His Young Guns Mob?

Father Maciel and his prey

Some of the air and oomph was taken out of Cantor's Young Gun initiative this year when he and his Illinois operative, sneaky closet case Aaron Schock, used it to take down veteran conservative Don Manzullo on behalf of their Young Gun pal Adam Kinzinger. But the NRCC is still using the name the same way the DCCC uses the Red-to-Blue program, highlighting to donors which candidates have the party establishment's seal of approval. Many low-info donors write checks based on who the party bosses put in Red-to-Blue and Young Guns. Because they have the same name, the NRCC program is often confused with Cantor's sleazy Young Guns PAC, which is widely hated inside the GOP congressional caucus these days.

Half of the Young Guns inductees are waging competitive bids against Democratic incumbents. They are: Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania, Matt Doheny and Randy Altschuler of New York, Richard Tisei of Massachusetts, Andy Barr of Kentucky, and Ricky Gill of California.

The party is also providing support for several candidates, such as Jackie Walorski of Indiana and Jason Plummer of Illinois, who are seeking seats that Democratic members are vacating. Also tapped to be part of the program is Arizona Republican Jesse Kelly, who’s running in the June special election to complete the term of former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The committee has also inducted two contenders who are seeking seats that were created in redistricting and that do not have an incumbent, David Valadao of California and Mia Love of Utah.

One Young Gun is running for a seat a Republican member is vacating: Tony Strickland of California, who is waging a bid for the Ventura County-area district of retiring GOP Rep. Elton Gallegly.

But there's a whole stock of perfect Republican candidates just watching for Sessions and Cantor to recruit for the Young Guns. Perhaps young Schock should get right on this one. The Vatican has been forced into investigating 7 priests from the child rape organization they were running called the Legion of Christ. All 7 were active participants in sexual abuse of minors and other criminal activities. Just over a year ago, we looked at the horrific career of papal favorite Marcial Maciel, the serial rapist who headed the Legion of Christ and who was always protected by "former" Nazi, Pope Ratzinger. But the pressure to investigate the whole den of child rapists, including a recent rape of a child, has been mounting to the point that even Ratzinger had to give in. (I wonder if they'll conclude that the rapist priests were just sending inappropriate texts and IMs to their victims.)

The investigations mark the first known Vatican action against Legion priests for alleged sexual assault following the scandal of the Legion's founder, who was long held up as a model by the Vatican despite credible accusations-- later proven-- that he raped and molested his seminarians.

The Legion, which is now under Vatican receivership, has insisted that the crimes of its late founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, were his alone.

But the Vatican investigation of other Legion priests indicates that the same culture of secrecy that Maciel created within the order to cover his crimes enabled other priests to abuse children-- just as abusive clergy of other religious orders and dioceses have done around the world.

...While the investigation is under way, the accused priests are being kept away from children, the Legion said.

"Over the past few years, in several countries, the major superiors of the Legion of Christ have received some allegations of gravely immoral acts and more serious offenses ... committed by some Legionaries," the statement said.

...Preliminary investigations of an unspecified number of other priests accused of abuse found them innocent, the Legion said.

The scandal of Maciel and the Legion ranks as one of the worst of the 20th-century Catholic Church, since he was held up as a model for the faithful by Pope John Paul II. The orthodox order, which has about 900 priests around the world, was praised for attracting both money and vocations to the priesthood.

Documentation from Vatican archives, however, has shown that as early as the 1950s, the Vatican had evidence that he was a drug addict and pedophile.

Only in 2006 did the Vatican sanction Maciel to a lifetime of penance and prayer for his crimes. He died in 2008 and a year later the Legion admitted he had fathered three children with two different women and had abused his seminarians.

The Vatican took over the Legion in 2010 and is pushing through a process of reform.
Aaron Loughrey, 35, was a 17- or 18-year-old Legion seminarian in Ireland in the spring of 1995 when he says he was forced by a superior to masturbate him in bed. Loughrey, who left the Legion before being ordained, says he has been in counseling almost ever since as he seeks justice from the order.

He said that the vow he took as a seminarian never to criticize the actions or deeds of a superior made him unable to question what the priest had told him to do. In a parallel to the way Maciel abused his seminarians, Loughrey says his superior had told him that an unnamed illness gave him terrible cramps in his lower abdomen that could only be eased with massage.

"In my heart and in my conscience I believed that I had acted that night like a true Legionary-- putting my superior's needs before my own-- and I stuffed the unsavory thoughts and feelings to the back of my mind," Loughrey has written.

In an email Friday, Loughrey said he was certain there were more than just a handful of abusers in the Legion. Those currently under investigation represent about 1 percent of Legion priests.

"I would like to say I am glad about this (investigation), but I am honestly not hopeful that anything will come of it," he said.

This is, of course, the problem of forcing people-- priests and Republicans-- to live their miserable lives in closets. They always go insane. Always. Closets are for clothes, not for humans.