Jason Jones: Cardinal Blaise Cupich and the Guilty Bystanders

By Jason Jones, a Senior Contributor, The Stream, September 26, 2018

In 1964, a young New Yorker, Kitty Genovese, was attacked in the street. Her assailant wielded a knife, and because she struggled, it took him almost ten minutes to kill her. Though some dispute the numbers, there were dozens of people in apartments nearby who could see or hear the attack. Not one came to her aid. No one even called the cops. These people weren’t being neighbors. They were guilty bystanders.

That’s what I feel is happening with clerical sex abuse, cover-ups, and homosexual harassment in Catholic seminaries. It’s happening right in front of us. But how many of us are doing anything about it?

Each day, it seems, we learn something new and appalling. It seems that the faction of cardinals who promoted, then elected Pope Francis, and the cardinals he named himself, are particularly awful:

• Cardinal Danneels, Bergoglio booster. We have him on tape bullying a young man molested by his own uncle, a bishop, into not reporting the abuse. Danneels even blames the victim, alleging that he seduced the old deviant.

• Cardinal Maradiaga, “vice-pope” under Francis. His local seminary is a homosexual hothouse, students report. Seminarians who complained of gay harassment got thrown out for causing trouble.

• Cardinal McCarrick, who molested a boy he’d baptized himself and preyed on seminarians for decades. Former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo-Maria Vigano says that Francis lifted Benedict XVI’s (too lenient) penalties on McCarrick. We do know that Francis restored him to favor, and sent him as a roving ambassador around the world. McCarrick helped negotiate the recent sellout of faithful Catholics to the Chinese Communist party.

• Cardinal Wuerl of Washington, D.C. Pope Francis has kept him in place, despite revelations by the Pennsylvania district attorney. Among them? That Wuerl recycled abusive priests at unwitting parishes. And paid a decade of hush money to a priest who’d made violent child pornography on church property. When that priest was murdered at the gay B&B he ran in Cuba, Wuerl flew his corpse home for a hero’s funeral.

• Evidence that Francis himself, in Argentina, spent tens of thousands of dollars defending a notorious sex abuser.

This list could be much longer. But you get the idea.

A Catholic sex abuse victim is even now being persecuted by his own Church.

I completely support the efforts of victims’ groups, faithful Catholics, and state attorneys general to dig up the truth, and get justice for victims. Pope Francis’ claim that his silence in the face of all these charges is like Jesus’ silence before Herod? That’s blasphemy, as my friend John Zmirak has written.

Who’s Being Victimized Today?

But right now I want to speak not of past crimes but present ones. Of a Catholic sex abuse victim even now being persecuted by his own Church. Which he serves as a priest. He’s not alone. Every Catholic at the parish he pastored till recently is also a victim. Of whom? Of Chicago archbishop Cardinal Blaise Cupich — another member of the progressive “mafia” appointed by Pope Francis. As Church Militant reports:

Parishioners of Resurrection Parish in Chicago, Illinois, held a rainbow flag-burning event last week, cutting up and setting on fire an LGBT flag that once hung in the sanctuary at the parish’s first Mass. The event was originally scheduled for Sept. 29, the Feast of St. Michael and the Archangels, but the Chicago archdiocese — heeding complaints by gay activists — called the pastor, Fr. Paul John Kalchik, and ordered him not to hold the event. A handful of parishioners took things into their own hands and decided they would burn the flag themselves.

Kalchik is a victim of homosexual rape and abuse, once at the age of 11 and again at age 19. He has been pastor of Resurrection Parish for 11 years. He issued a heartfelt plea to Pope Francis in an open letter calling for an end to clerical cover-up. His strongly worded articles and homilies calling for reform in the Church, in particular denouncing the homosexual predation of clerics, has drawn down the ire of Cdl. Blase Cupich and the Chicago archdiocese, who have threatened to remove his priestly faculties and derail his priestly career.

Sending in the Enforcers

After parishioners burned the offensive banner, what did Cardinal Cupich do? Again, Church Militant:

[H]e ordered Kalchik to St. Luke (a treatment center with a notorious past, whose former CEO was convicted in 2014 of embezzling $200,000 dollars, which he spent on gay lovers).

“I made it clear to them that I was not just going to cave and walk away from being pastor here at Resurrection Parish, and I stated clearly: I was once worked over by an ordained minister of the Church; it’s not going to happen again,” Kalchik wrote. “I will not leave Resurrection Parish on my own accord.”

Father Kalchik was as good as his word. But Cupich struck fast, and hard:

The vicars for priests, acting on behalf of Cdl. Cupich, confronted Kalchik just as he was leaving to say 6 p.m. Mass, asking to meet with him privately. Kalchik refused to meet alone, instead gathering parishioners to be witnesses to the exchange.

Lyle and Thomas made clear they were there on order of Cdl. Cupich, who insisted that Kalchik be sent to St. Luke Institute for his “psychiatric issues.” Both vicars for priests had also only days before threatened that Kalchik could have his faculties removed if he failed to comply with Cupich’s orders.

…

According to parishioners Miriam and Wayne Smith, who spoke with Kalchik immediately after the confrontation, the vicars for priests “attempted to order him to pack his bags and leave, but he refused.”

“Fr. Kalchik told them that he had done nothing wrong and that he was going nowhere,” the Smiths told Church Militant. “They continued to use crude and threatening language that upset the staff members present very much.”

In a disturbing twist, the two vicars for priests alluded to Kalchik’s death when he continued to refuse to leave with them.

“Fr. Kalchik told those two enforcers that he had Mass to celebrate in the morning and that he was needed in the parish,” the Smiths continued. “The response from the two was to ask him, ‘What would happen if you were dead?’”

They could have asked, “What would happen if you were sick or injured?” but they asked him what would happen if he was dead. Based on that it is clear that if any harm came to Fr. Kalchik it would be on the orders of Cdl. Cupich. They continued to bully and verbally insult and attack Fr. Kalchik until it was clear that he was not going to do as they demanded because he had done nothing wrong. They left the rectory and everybody was very shaken up because they never expected that kind of behavior from the representative of Cdl. Cupich.

The Smiths said they left the rectory at 7:30 p.m. and saw both Lyle and Thomas “skulking around across the street in the shadows.” When the priests saw that they had been noticed, they entered their vehicles and drove off.

Father Kalchik is now in hiding. Good for his faithful parishioners for standing by him as witnesses and speaking up. They wouldn’t abandon him, as Kitty Genovese was abandoned. (Want to know how bad is the St. Luke Institute, where Cupich tried to ship Father Kalchik? Read this testimony by a priest who survived the place.)

The Chicago Way

I grew up in Chicago. For many years I found the Catholic Church repulsive, because of the kind of Catholics I’d met. Those formed by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s corrupt, libertine, leftist activist tenure as Archbishop of Chicago. As I wrote in an open letter to Cardinal Cupich in 2015, my daughter

Jessica was aborted against my wishes. And against her mother’s. Though we were both in high school, we were committed to caring for our baby. I had dropped out of school and joined the U.S. Infantry so that I could support my child. But while I was off at basic training, my girlfriend’s father uncovered our plan, and coerced her into a third trimester abortion. Our child died just a few short weeks before she would have been born an American citizen with the protection of all our laws.

She was killed at the Masonic hospital in your city of Chicago, during the tenure of one of your predecessors Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. Her father was a friend of the Cardinal’s, and a prominent Chicago Catholic. For years after that, I harbored a potent grudge against Catholics and the Church, whose prelates, politicos and parents I associated with abortion.

It might sound irrational to you, but I blamed Cardinal Bernardin. Not him alone, of course. Jessica’s death had many fathers. However, as Chicago’s spiritual father, wearing for that city the mantle of the apostles, Cardinal Bernardin bore unique responsibility for witnessing in public to the sanctity of life. As you do now.

A Seamless Bullet-Proof Vest for Pro-Abortion Pols

What provoked me to write? Cupich’s scandalous answer to the news that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts for profit. Cupich wrote in the Chicago Tribune that Catholics should not get especially worked up over this horror. In Cupich’s words:

While commerce in the remains of defenseless children is particularly repulsive, we should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

A man who could answer the cold-blooded, cannibalistic traffic in baby body parts with that boilerplate Seamless garment agitprop, what should we think of him? That he has no real passion for justice. No concern for victims or the vulnerable.

So, no wonder Cupich is trying to lock up a sex abuse victim and faithful priest for defending the Gospel’s teachings on sexuality.

No wonder tens of thousands have called for Cupich’s resignation. I’m adding my name to the list. Please read the petition and add your name as well.

We must not stand by silent as innocents are abused, their lives destroyed, and Faith is corrupted.

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