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By John Zmirak, The Stream, August 23, 2018

John ZmirakMollie Tibbetts is dead. She was a college girl, an American, a jogger just going for a run in Brooklyn. Not the one in New York, the one in Iowa. And now she is dead. And the man who apparently killed her? He should never have been among us. He snuck into our country. But the politicians and reporters aren’t willing to call him “illegal.” He’s only “undocumented.”

That’s the new euphemism for people who flout our laws, commit identity theft and fill our emergency rooms, waiting for care they’ll never pay for. There’s no crime involved. He just hadn’t filled out his forms.

Mollie Tibbett’s killer isn’t “illegal.” Just “undocumented.”

Give it a few more years, and the media won’t even call what happened to Mollie “murder.” Not if it skews their spin. Maybe they’ll say “termination,” the word they use to candycoat abortions. They can call the next Mollie a “product of conception.” And hey, that’s technically true! No fake news there.

The Senator Is Bored by Your Question

When Senator Elizabeth Warren got asked on TV about Mollie, she recited some rote condolence. But she quickly lost interest, and pivoted to … sob stories about illegal immigrants who spent a few days away from their families. Warren knows that the conveyor belt of new Democratic voters leads straight north from our broken borders. To places like … Brooklyn, Iowa.

Not to the gated communities and million-dollar mansions that senators and CEOs live in. The immigrants come into neighborhoods like that in the morning. They do the yard work and serve as nannies. Then they troop out dutifully by sundown, like good campesinos. That’s what such politicians want instead of citizens.

The Cardinal Has Better Things to Do

There’s another victim whose name I wish we knew. Because he deserves a voice. He’s the 15-year-old boy who was molested by Fr. George Zirwas, of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. He was part of a sex-ring of gay predator priests, who focused on teenage boys. His preferences were well-known to then-bishop Donald Wuerl (now Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C.).

But Wuerl never called the cops. He didn’t tell Rome to defrock him. After moving Zirwas from parish to parish, watching him re-offend, Wuerl finally put him on paid leave, for the rest of his life. When Zirwas offered Wuerl names of still more priest offenders, Wuerl paid him more not to tell him. Instead, Wuerl asked him to sign a false declaration that he had no such information. Which would get Wuerl off the hook, legally speaking.

What happened to that boy whose name we’ll never know? In some ways, it was worse than the fate Mollie Tibbetts suffered. At least that was probably quick. The Washington Examiner, citing the Pennsylvania grand jury report, tells us what Zirwas and his predatory sex cult did to boys:

They “shared intelligence or information regarding victims as well as exchanging the victims amongst themselves,” the report claims. “This ring also manufactured child pornography on Diocesan property, including parishes and rectories. … This group of priests used whips, violence and sadism in raping their victims.”

It’s not for me to say if that’s a fate worse than death.

We’ll likely never know what Zirwas was doing to poor boys in Cuba. When Zirwas was finally (finally!) murdered and went to meet Justice, what did Cardinal Wuerl do? He lifted Zirwas’ suspension from the priesthood, so he could be buried with full church honors.

A Church-Funded Gay Retirement in Hot, Sexy Cuba

Zirwas wasn’t finished. As the indispensible Church Militant reports:

Zirwas spent his retirement in comfort, living off a monthly stipend from the diocese (paid by Catholic laity), using it to fund his homosexual lifestyle in Cuba. His boyfriend would later reveal that Zirwas was a fixture on the gay scene in Havana, his apartment a popular stopping place for foreign visitors. Meanwhile, the diocese was telling the public Zirwas was ministering to the poor in Cuba.

We’ll likely never know what Zirwas was doing to poor boys in Cuba. When Zirwas was murdered and went to meet Justice, what did Cardinal Wuerl do? He lifted Zirwas’ suspension from the priesthood, so he could be buried with full church honors. Wuerl welcomed the body and said the funeral Mass himself. Zirwas’ sins and crimes? They were still a church secret.

In his glowing eulogy, Wuerl said: “The one thing we know is that George Zirwas responded to God’s call. … [Wuerl expressed] great confidence that Father George will experience new life in Christ.”

We are Replaceable

Have no fear, however! Cardinal Wuerl does sometimes make a moral witness. He was one of the leading clerics denouncing President Trump for enforcing our immigration laws. The conveyor belt of fresh Catholics, borrowed from lands with better bishops than Cardinal Wuerl, leads straight north from our broken borders to places like … Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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The Democrats can afford to leave cities they run like Chicago and Baltimore chaotic free-fire zones. They can do little or nothing to help our native working class escape from the welfare glue trap. There will always be new Democrats, streaming in across the border. Likewise, Catholic bishops like Wuerl can shrug when four native-born Catholics out of ten leaves in disgust. We are replaceable.

Like that young man in Pittsburgh. Like Mollie, God rest her soul.

_______________________________

John Zmirak is a Senior Editor of The Stream, and author of the new Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1986, then his M.F.A. in screenwriting and fiction and his Ph.D. in English in 1996 from Louisiana State University. His focus was the English Renaissance, and the novels of Walker Percy. He taught composition at LSU and screenwriting at Tulane University, and has written screenplays for and with director Ronald Maxwell (Gods & Generals and Gettysburg). He was elected alternate delegate to the 1996 Republican Convention, representing Pat Buchanan.

He has been Press Secretary to pro-life Louisiana Governor Mike Foster, and a reporter and editor at Success magazine and Investor’s Business Daily, among other publications. His essays, poems, and other works have appeared in First Things, The Weekly Standard, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, USA Today, FrontPage Magazine, The American Conservative, The South Carolina Review, Modern Age, The Intercollegiate Review, Commonweal, and The National Catholic Register, among other venues. He is a fellow of Citizens of the American Republic. He has contributed to American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia and The Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought. From 2000-2004 he served as Senior Editor of Faith & Family magazine and a reporter at The National Catholic Register. During 2012 he was editor of Crisis.

He is author, co-author, or editor of twelve books, including Wilhelm Ropke: Swiss Localist, Global Economist, The Grand Inquisitor (graphic novel) and The Race to Save Our Century. He was editor of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s guide to higher education, Choosing the Right College and Collegeguide.org, for ten years, and is also editor of Disorientation: How to Go to College Without Losing Your Mind.