The popping
sound you hear is the Catholic Church imploding after pulling its dick from
millions of boy-asses over the past two millennia.
I shed no tears. I’m
glad the chicken-hawks have come home to roost. I was raised Catholic in the
Philly ‘burbs. I endured twelve years of Catholic schooling, the
merciless Sisters of Mercy slapping the shit out of my young pink face just as
they’d torn the Brylcreemed hair out of my
older brother’s skull years earlier, their grey old pruny
clit-mouths screaming that Jesus would rain eternal hellfire down on me for
daring to ever question their authority. From my experience, the nuns were far
crueler than the priests. I never heard any whispers of nuns or priests
in my grade school diddling any of the kids, but it was only the nuns who were
verbally vicious and physically violent. And although sexual abuse by priests
has been making headlines for more than a decade, you never hear about sexual
abuse by nuns unless someone
such as me writes about it.
It wasn’t
until high school that I encountered a priest who gave the nuns a run for their
money in terms of jaw-dropping arrogance and cruelty.
When colon cancer
picked my father's bones clean in the New Wave summer
of '79, me and the surviving Goads sat in the front pew at Holy Cross Church in
Springfield, PA, for his funeral mass.
The parish chose Father
Richard Jones to recite the mass. Father Jones taught at my high
school and was always hugging you and mussing your hair every chance he got. He
had a Barbasol smell to him that could have been
alcohol vapors. He ran the local Catholic Charismatic Renewal meetings, an odd
movement where ex-hippies, drifters, and even normal fat church people would
play folk guitars and speak in tongues and fall to the ground under the
bitchin' force of the Holy Spirit. They used to hold their psycho glossolalia-fests
in an old building on the cemetery grounds where my father was about to be
buried.
But this was a
standard funeral mass, and the time came for Father Jones to deliver his
eulogy. I don't remember specifics, but the essence of his sermon was that my
father, Al Goad, was not a good man. For what seemed like ten minutes, Father
Jones hammered on the idea that my father was a despicable weasel.
We Goads sat in our
front-row pew, incredulous. This was possibly the rudest thing I've ever
witnessed. If you didn't think he was a good man, let your stupid God decide.
This dumb fucking ritual is for the family's benefit, not yours. As we
rode to the cemetery in our rented limo, my sister Chris was crying and cursing
Father Jones, while my brother John stared stonily ahead without saying a word.
In 2006, I received
an email from a guy who grew up on the same block as
me. He said Father Jones and a slew of other local pastoral celebs had been
getting popped for sex crimes. Here's the poop on Father Jones, straight from
the inestimable Delaware County [PA] Times:
One [plaintiff]
alleges he was abused by the Rev. Richard G. Jones, a former religion teacher
at Cardinal O’Hara High School....
In his lawsuit,
Christopher charges that when he first reported the alleged sexual abuse to
archdiocesan officials around 1988, he was told by them that reporting the
abuse to criminal authorities "would not be the Christian thing to
do."
In the lawsuit
Christopher also alleges he was told by archdiocesan officials that they were
not responsible for the conduct of a priest in the archdiocese because he is
"an independent contractor."
The lawsuit
charges that Jones "coerced" Christopher to live with him. He said
fondling also occurred in a confessional at Cardinal O'Hara High School.
The lawsuit
also states that Jones told fellow priests and other people that Christopher
was his "adopted son" and that he convinced Christopher fondling one
another was a sign of trust. The lawsuit alleges that Jones then proceeded to
rape and sodomize Christopher over three years. Jones allegedly took
Christopher on vacations and retreats to Maryland, New Jersey and Massachusetts
and later, around age 18, inducted the plaintiff into a "charismatic
community" of priests and laypersons that promoted homosexual and
pedophilic behavior.
I don’t know
what became of the lawsuit, only that Father Jones is now “laicized,”
defrocked, and probably never spent a day in jail nor a penny of his own money
to compensate his accuser. Another friend from the old church recently
contacted me to say that multiple other males eventually stepped forward
accusing Father Jones of sexual improprieties.
So I’m glad what’s
happening to the Catholic Church. Even though I was never deemed cute enough to
molest, they fucked with my head to the point where I enjoy gloating about
their demise.
Now if we could
only spread the blame around and acknowledge that whenever someone in authority
claims that God is on their side, they’ll likely use that as an excuse to
fuck you literally and figuratively.
