The team here at Bryan Hehir Exposed is going to try
giving different members and guests the opportunity to post their commentary. The author of this post, who has been the lead on the Chronology up to now, assures us that this content will be free from any judgments or editorial opinions. In other words, just the facts, plus excerpts from what others have written.
Point 1: Fr. Bryan Hehir’s biography states that in 1984 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. The MacArthur Foundation award is often referred to as a “Genius” award, as you can see in Wikipedia, this Bryan Hehir biography ,and this Boston Globe article about Fr. Hehir.
Point 2: On January 29, 2004, Fr. Hehir spoke at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, and blogger Rebecca Nappi reported on his talk. Catholic blogger, Diogenes, at CatholicCulture picked-up the report a few days later. Rebecca wrote, “He covered a range of topics, but I was most fascinated with his take on the priest sex abuse scandal…
About the abuse scandal, Hehir believes that “all that is to be known is already known.”
He believes the media has moved on and “I don’t think the New York Times will run 35 stories on it in 2004.”
Point 3: On December 30, 2004, Diogenes wrote a retrospective look at the worst prophesies from the beginning of 2004, and cited Fr. Hehir’s comment from January 2004:
A Boolean search at the New York Times‘s website for catholic+priest+sexual abuse produces 229 hits for the past 30 days. Not all of these stories directly treat the abuse scandal, but roughly a third do. I think it’s fair to say that the media have not “moved on.” Aside from the upcoming diocesan bankruptcies, Cardinals Egan and Mahony are presently in the early stages of new legal woes. Anybody care to bet the Times will run fewer than 35 stories on the Crisis in 2005? How about 2025?
Point 4: August 13, 2008. Cardinal George lifts the veil on abuses
Point 5: June 06, 2007. Archdiocese of Portland releases secret documents on priest sexual abuse
Point 6: January 29, 2009. Cardinal Mahony Under Investigation for Clergy Sex Scandal Cover-Up
Point 7: March 4, 2010. More abuse allegations against Maciel surface
Point 8: March 19, 2010. Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal goes global
Allegations of church-based sex abuse are increasing across Europe, including in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. New abuse allegations have surfaced in Brazil, home of the world’s largest Catholic population. Ireland continues to wrestle with the fallout from years of revelations about abusive priests. It wasn’t until this week that Ireland’s top Catholic cardinal acknowledged the church’s response to the abuse had been “hopelessly inadequate.”
Point 9: March 26, 2010. “Wisconsin priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys
Point 10: See Point 2.
About the abuse scandal, Hehir believes that “all that is to be known is already known.”
Genius.
Fellas,
I hate to tell ya, he’s right.
“all that is to be known is already known.”
There are, is and will be Active Homosexual priests and Bishops in high places. Is there more to the story than this?
He was perhaps wrong in thinking that the NYT would quickly move on from the issue.
The reason he believed this is that he lives in a powerful relativistic quasi-catholic world. He is likely pleased that the NYT continues to harp on the issues – for they are attacking all that needs to change…The power base thing is so far beyond anti-catholic ‘name calling’ it misses the point.
Its like Liberace “does it bother you when people make fun of your flamboyant style?” answer: “yes, I cry all the way to the bank”
He obviously likes to hang out with active homosexuals- Lets be honest about it. Most of them can cook, are snappy dressers, know interesting and exotic people and throw great parties.
Exposing Bad Hair for hanging out with fags is a non-starter. Nobody cares, especially nobody with any real power in America.
I think expose Bad Hair would do well to harp on Hairs connection to the biggest hoax in the 2oth century. Katholic acceptance of birth control.
LastCatholic,
I think Hehir’s connection to Catholic acceptance of birth control was covered in a post about a week ago:
Fr. Bryan Hehir Should Be Fired (Flashback to 1978)
Dan Morgan lists some indisputable facts here and in the chronology. Thank you.
I agree with all this blog is doing and with much that other people leaving comments have said, but I have one request. Could we eliminate derogatory terms like f_g that really don’t forward the cause of this blog – which is to expose the truth and forward the defense of the Magisterium’s teachings?
I understand people are really angry with what the Lavender Mafia has done infiltrating the Church, but labeling people just doesn’t help.
And I do think it matters that Francis Marion points out the connections. Birds of a feather flock together. Also, isn’t active homosexuality and Catholics’ misguided acceptance of contraception tied together? Humanae Vitae. We’re all called to use sexuality as God intended…
I’m sorry, these sodomites do NOT own the language.
This life style is based on ‘grave disorder’.
My reading and prayer on the Magisterium’s teaching leads me to believe that eternal damnation awaits these people, we have a moral obligation in charity to warn them and guide them. (certainly not coddle and use their power like Bad Hair)
Tell you what – When they give back the word Gay which formally meant happy and carefree I’ll stop using the descriptive and yes – inflammatory words.
I’d use the word buggery but nobody would know what it meant.
As far as labeling – It is they who have labeled themselves by their bold defiance of God’s word and natural law for that matter.
The History of Paul Shanley and friends in Boston and the shear outrageous nature of it all that includes several long lists of young men who have died of AIDS after being introduced to ‘the life style’ by these demons and literally countless suicides. A rational conclusion is this: A Sodomite Priest is a tool of the Devil – there is no other way to put it.
These types love to hide behind women’s skirts. Don’t be fooled. Confronting them in their error is charity. I Admonish the sinner like a man, and make no apologies for it. Enough is Enough.
I absolutely concur on Humanae Vitae – This from Fr. Corapi
“The long-term effects of rejecting the papal encyclical are “profound,” says Fr. Corapi. “The argument can be strongly made that the proliferation of abortion can pretty much be traced to artificial contraception,” he said. “It’s almost a cause-and-effect kind of thing, and Paul VI warned about that. But large numbers [of] Church leaders rejected it and were so bold as to even reject it in writing, and that’s not without consequences. There were profound consequences not only in the Church but in the United States, Canada and the whole world. It’s had a profound effect on de-Christianizing the culture.”
So what actual is the “Cause of this Blog”
Expose Bad Hair?
So lets get on with it.
Charlene and LCIB,
Thanks for your comments. The authors of this blog are proponents of the truth and want to advance and defend the Magisterium’s teachings of the Catholic faith in the public square. So we seem to be in agreement on the end goal. Exposing the actions and words of Fr. J. Bryan Hehir is the specific focus on this blog. Orthodox Catholics seem to be finding this a good place to visit and return to, so we want to keep it that way. That being said, we share the concerns about the language used and also about comments the sometimes end up going way far afield from the original topic of the blog post and focus of the blog. If the result of the comments left (whether by intent of the commenter or unintentional) is that orthodox Catholics on the same side are fighting amongst ourselves–or the comments undermine the message of the post or lead in an entirely different direction–then we’ll need to turn comments off for all future posts.
Fine,
I’ll just go back to grinding my teeth.
And contemplate the gift of long suffering.
Upon further reflection…
I am a bit lost. Perhaps you could help.
This post appears to be an effort to expose Bad Hair as less-than a genius.
Kind of like Nah, Nah you’re not that smart – “your prediction about the ______ scandal and the NYT was wrong”.
The reality is this – a one sentence quote from Bad Hair from 1994 still has enough traction to warrant posting and discussion 15 years later.
It can’t possibly be only me who sees the true political brilliance in this. “I don’t think the NYT will run 35 stories on this in 1994″ What do you think he ran a quantitative analysis to come up with the number 35?
He tossed a bone to try to put the fire out, he pooh poohed the problem in an effort to make it go away. He defused the criticism. And here we are 15 years later wringing our hands with the conference in Fla. etc. It Worked.
Fr. Corapi makes reference to de-Christianizing the culture; If we except this as a reality that our culture has been de-christianized, and the de-facto creation of a parallel church in America seems at least plausible, then Bad Hair is at least very close to its throne.
Perhaps we need to gain a true appreciation of the enemy who steps on the throat of the Church in America everyday.
Genius? Absolutely positively political genius.
LCIB,
I don’t think anyone would disagree with you that in the world of human wisdom Bryan Hehir is a “political genius”. So is George Soros.
What of it?
Those who have traveled the path of King Solomon – i.e., those who have relied upon human wisdom and found it wanting and laid their intellect at the foot of the cross in exchange for knowing “what is Truth” – we are not measuring Hehir’s genius against human intellect.
We know the reasons why his genius is foolishness.
We’re not in the game to win a political battle. His victories are a blip on the screen. All we are here to do is to be a witness. To let him know and his Cardinal know and the Vatican know and all who come across this know that God sees what they are doing. We’re shooting a flare cross their bow.
If they take it, hooray. If they don’t, good luck to them.
I don’t recall the number of times Moses went back to the Pharaoh. Eventually God says “that’s enough”. We’ll eventually put the blood on our door, crawl inside our cavern and wait it out.
God Bless.
In reading the gushing blog post of His Eminence with respect to the praise of Bryan Hehir, it suddenly struck me: Cardinal Sean O’Malley, himself, is actually liberal. Consider the leftward tilt of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the Caritas deal, the Secretary of Communications’ link to Vice President Joe Biden & Bryan Hehir as his ‘real vicar’. O’Malley simply must be politically left-leaning.
Dan Brown is right; the tilt of the Archdiocesan leadership is so left-leaning it could be touching the California coast. Wouldn’t it be great to see it tilt toward Rome?
Here’s another point to mention regarding secular genius. As far as I know, Fr. Hehir is still the Archdiocesan liason on the board of Boston’s Caritas Christi hospital system.
The latest proposal, by which a secular buyer will take Caritas over, has been billed as safeguarding the six-member hospitals’ Catholic identity.
But wait.
Now we learn…. according to a May 6 attorney general’s report, that there’s an escape clause there that’s undefined enough to drive a truck through.
Here’s the May 7 report from Catholic World News:
“The controversial sale of Boston’s Catholic health-care system includes a provision that would allow the secular buyer to opt out of a requirement to maintain the system’s Catholic identity, by paying $25 million to a charity instead.
“The proposed sale of the Caritas Christi hospitals to Cerberus Capital Management stipulates that the new owners will run the institutions in accordance with Catholic moral principles. But if that requirement becomes ‘materially burdensome,’ the new management could choose to contribute $25 million to a charity chosen by the archdiocese, and remove all signs of Catholic identity from the hospitals. That $25 million would be roughly 3% of the sale price for the hospital system.”
According to a Boston Globe article the same day, the proposed contract does not define “materially burdensome.”
And also on the same day … Cardinal Sean blogged about the sale but failed to mention the escape clause item. About the proposal he said, “Catholic moral and ethical principles are at the heart of the Catholic mission but, at the same time, we are committed to service to the poor, the underprivileged and immigrants.”
Why is there the word “but” in that sentence? Ethics and morals are at the heart of the mission, but?
So long Catholic identity …
Dear Redmond,
The Church suffering, the Church Triumphant, the Church Militant.
We the Militant battle princes and principalities, all the while seeking eternal salvation for all.
We have in our midst a rogue priest with literally global influence. A man who, some would suggest was influential in bringing about the near complete rejection of Humanea Vitea in the USA in 1968 (50 million babies dead from abortion) and clearly intimately involved with so-called gay marriage in Massachusetts which again is an error that de-Christianizes our culture and spreads like small pox. (see for example the street preacher in London this week incarcerated for preaching against homosexual ‘recreation’)
This same fella has a robe wearing Cardinal running Defense for him…
Shall I repeat that?
He has – by all accounts- a holy man; Cardinal O’Malley publicly defending him & in all likelihood planted the phrase “…those who criticize do a great disservice to the Church” on his lips.
The Dude is Rasputin!
Redmond and the rest-
I understand the promptings of the contemplative life. That in God’s Wisdom and Mercy is what we need to pray for, but we do have a role to play in the unfolding of time. I think it is fair to say that some truths are not revealed to all and that true persecution of the church is a historical guarantee that we should genuinely expect. But are flares enough to sound the alarm and warn the sheep?
I wouldn’t want to give Bad Hair too much credit but I’m thinking when the second half of the Third Secret of Fatima is revealed his name may be in there. (chuckle)
And AA-125? his earthly hero and mentor.
On these last two points- do I digress? Or is it at the crux of the matter of Bad Hair?
Regards
Rubbish. I say!
Left VS. Right is a completely false dichotomy for a true Catholic.
We ascend to the truth, to orthodoxy, to Rome!
We Catholics are neither left nor right we are on a straight and narrow path ascending to the truths revealed through the risen Christ!
There is but One High Alter
(hopefully at the center of the church where it belongs)
Let the pagans discuss this left/right foolishness.
A Cardinals political disposition is of no matter to me! No more important than his choice in ice cream flavor.
Carry the Cross, ascend Golgotha, And Rise with Christs Church!
This is my first visit to your site, and I do want to commend you on the amount of time and energy spent on advancing your deeply felt conviction and beliefs. I know that as Catholics, we need to stay true to the doctrine’s and teachings.
It’s important to remember how Christ lived his life, spending most of his time with people who were less than stellar in their morals and lifestyle (prostitutes, lepers, etc.). Many persecuted Jesus for doing so, questioning how he could possibly be the Son of God and associate himself with such types. However, Jesus was not concerned with what people thought. He knew that his followers would understand his actions.
Another duty as followers of Christ’s Church is to welcome others and encourage them to be a part of our faith. As you know, we accomplish this more with our actions than our words. It’s imperative that Love be the driving force behind our actions. Non-believers long for Christ, and they’re going to see him in the faces of his people. As Catholic Christians, we must live as Christ lived. We need for others to see us as the face of Love.
I know that the actions of this priest are apalling to those of you who are working diligently to expose him. But you must ask yourselves, in all honesty, what do you think Brian Hehir’s ultimate goal is by supporting issues that clearly are in conflict with the Church’s teachings? Is it to change the Catholic Church? Is it to divert believers?
The Sermon on the Mount, or the fifth chapter of Matthew clearly states Christ’s mission. While we need to adhere to our precepts, we must never lose sight of what Christ calls us to carry out in his name.
Thank you for your time.
Mariannjake,
Thanks for visiting and for your positive feedback on our work here. When you mention that it’s important to remember how Christ lived his life, spending most of his time with people who were less than stellar in their morals and lifestyle, and how many persecuted Jesus for doing so, I think it’s important to note that Jesus was constantly proclaiming the truth to those people. The people we are exposing via this blog are not doing that.
You ask an excellent question–we don’t know what Bryan Hehir’s ultimate goal is by supporting issues and people that clearly are in conflict with the Church’s teachings. Unfortunately, there is zero evidence that he is preaching the truth to them and trying to get them on a better path that will lead to the salvation of their souls. If any readers have such evidence, please send it our way.
Mack. Very well done, however there was a misprint in your citation. The clause does not read $25 million, it reads 30 pieces of silver.
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