Jesuit priest, former Executive Director of Southdown, and member of Justice Normand Glaude’s Advisory Panel
Jesuit priest Father John Allan Loftus, former Executive Director of Southdown, Canada’s prima facility for “treating” clerical sexual abusers, has been an advocate and active proponent of the anti-male radical feminist agenda for years. Inherent in that agenda is advocacy of the gay rights agenda.Justice Normand Glaude selected Loftus to sit on his Advisory Panel. He also chose Loftus to provide “contextual” evidence at the Cornwall Public Inquiry.
Despite the fact that a handful of clergy from the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall actually faced charges of sexual abuse and a smaller handful were convicted, much of the “rumour” and “innuendo” swirling around Cornwall and dismissed by Justice Glaude swirls around sexual abuse allegations against clergy. Therefore, with regards to Loftus’s appearance to provide “contextual” evidence one assumes that Loftus has been chosen to provide “expert” testify regarding the issue of clerical sexual abuse.
According to an article in the Catholic Register Loftus believes that one of the reasons he was asked to sit on the Advisory Panel was that he has no connections to people or institutions in Cornwall. We must therefore assume that none of Cornwall’s real or alleged clerical paedophiles darkened the doors of Southdown during the Loftus years. We must likewise assume that Loftus does not know canon lawyer Father Frank Morrissey, or former bishop Eugene Larocque, or the present Bishop, Paul Andre Durocher, and that nor does he know or did he ever know any of the real or alleged paedophiles – living or dead – of Cornwall.
For that matter we must assume that Loftus somehow managed to sail into Cornwall 27 October 1992, give his one-day-in-service training session on sexuality and clerical sexual misconduct to the priests of the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall and sail right back out without making a single connection to the diocese in general, the bishop (then Larocque) and/or any one of the clergy in particular. Furthermore we must also assume that IF Father Charles MacDonald was not otherwise occupied and did in fact attend the 1992 Loftus session the pair did not meet, and further that Loftus and “Charlie,” as MacDonald is known throughout the diocese, never crossed paths during Charlie’s stay at Southdown, and that Loftus and Larocque never once discussed Charlie’s alleged problems, “treatment” and/or progress.
According to the Catholic Register Loftus also believes that one of the mistakes the Church made in the past was to treat sexual abuse as a moral failure which, according to him, was the same mistake it, the Church, had made with alcoholism in the 1950s. This line of thought – from a Roman Catholic priest! – with its overt attempt to alleviate guilt and mitigate personal responsibility and accountability and thereby excuse or minimize sinful behaviour and the sexual atrocities perpetrated by men of the cloth belies comprehension. But, interestingly enough Loftus’ thought is one shared by Father Frank Morrissey, the Ottawa canon lawyer quoted and referenced time and again through the inquiry to date and the one utilised by the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall to deal with canonical issues during the inquiry. Loftus also worked hand in glove with Morrissey crafting From Pain to Hope, the Canadian Conference of Bishops less than stellar response to the burgeoning problem of clerical sexual abuse!
In his 1989 article Sexual Abuse in the Church: A Quest for Understanding, Loftus, who was then Executive Director of Southdown, (Canada’s prima facility for “treating” clerical sexual predators), goes to great lengths to rationalize clerical sexual abuse.
Note that in Sexual Abuse in the Church Loftus favourable quotes and references Kinsey advocate and disciple Dr. John Money at John Hopkins University. Money, who recently died and moved on to meet his Maker, is the Dr. John Money who had no problem whatsoever with paedophilia. Indeed to see where Money and his ilk fit in to the whole clerical abuse scandal and who the bishops of the United States sought out for advice read The Real Expert Advises: Sue Your Bishops. Dr. Money, as you will see when reading the article, condoned paedophilia, said he would never report a paedophile and believed that adult/child sex is normal and even beneficial! Not mentioned in the latter article but of significant interest is the fact that Money was a proponent of lowering the age of consent.
Randy Engel, in her recent block buster tell-all expose The Rite of Sodomy, writes that Dr.Money wrote the Introduction to Theo Sandfort’s apologia for pederasty, Boys on their Contacts with Men-A Study of Sexually Expressed Friendships. Here Money stated that, “It might very well be that deprivation of playful sexual rehearsal is the origin of a high proportion of sexual syndromes of human adolescence and adulthood.” Money is also identified as “the famed sex-reassignment specialist” who mentored Father Michael Peterson, the homosexual founder and former director of Maryland’s St. Luke Institute, a facility similar to Southdown. Peterson, who died of AIDS related complications, was, like most Roman Catholic clerical sexologists, a proponent of Alfred Kinsey.
And Loftus recommends Money as “instructive reading for anyone who still thinks that sexuality or sexual attraction is a simple affair”!
Back to the 1989 Loftus article.
Note that Loftus acknowledges that most incidents of clerical sexual abuse are homosexual in nature but then goes to great length to ensure that the homosexual community at large does not suffer. Loftus postulates that men who homosexually abuse may not be “constitutionally” homosexual but rather men who haven’t quite sorted out their sexual orientation, and that to identify men who make “inappropriate” advances to members of the same sex as homosexual “does a great disservice to mature homosexuals” According to Loftus the problem may be that of “gross sexual immaturity,” language akin to that of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops which, back in the late 80s, became abuzz with talk of “psychosexual immaturity.”
This focus on sexual maturity converges with the growing “ephebophlia” chatter emerging from Loftus and his Catholic confreres in their apparent all-out effort to spare “homosexual” clergy in particular and homosexuals in general the feared backlash as files, testimony and studies from diocese upon diocese made clear that an astounding number of clerical sexual abuse victims were/are males who were/are homosexually molested and that in many instances the molesting priest was simultaneously enagaing in homosexual activities with “consenting” adults.
Just as the definitions and classifications of paedophiles varies and evolves according to the thesis and fluid inclinations, audience and politics of the “expert” so too the definition of ephebophilia which some define as a gender-specifically male/male attraction and others as either male and/or female. The one common factor in their views, however, is that somehow men (in this instance, read: clergy) who molest a post-pubescent boy (this age varies with the “expert” and can be as young as 11) are more capable of rehabilitation than those who molest a pre-pubescent boy (depending on the “expert” this age can be reduced to pre-11).
And on that note I will refer you to a submission to the Ad Hoc Committee of Sexual Abuse of American Conference of Catholic Bishops by Dr. Germain Grisez, Professor of Christian Ethics at Mount Saint Mary’s College in Emmitsburg and a man described by many as America’s eminent moral theologian.
Grisez shares the opinion that paedophilia is an addiction akin to alcoholism, but that aside he candidly addresses and, I suggest, thoroughly debunks the notion that that ephebophilia is a distinct “orientation” apart from that of homosexuality and urges the bishops of the United States to, among other things, “recognize and state publicly that a large and important part of the clerical sexual offenses to be dealt with are seductions by homosexual clerics of adolescent boys and young men.”
Grisez essentially pleads with the bishops to
· remind their priests “that all of them are answerable to Jesus for the souls entrusted to each of them, and that they therefore must never facilitate, conceal, or ignore one another’s serious wrongdoing but always prefer to promote and protect the good of souls”,
· to impose a “just penalty” on clerics, religious, and Church employees who do not report any sexual offences of which they are aware or think may have transpired, and
· remember that they have “the interests of Jesus and of everyone who would be injured by future clerical sexual offenses” and that therefore the “preferences of victims and their families for privacy cannot justify a bishop or others who act on behalf of the diocese in limiting the communication suitable for safeguarding those wider interests.”
· laicize molesting clergy
To date the majority of American bishops have turned a blind eye to Roman Catholic moraly theology which upholds Church teaching and common sense and are, like their dissident hand-picked clerical sexual abuse experts, circling the wagons around the homosexual clergy in their midst who have not been charged while busily implementing politically-correct gender neutral sexual abuse training programs throughout the nation.
As for Father John Allan Loftus, if there is any doubt that this Jesuit, who now does damage control for the American Roman Catholic sexual abuse scandals, is at odds with his Church on the issue of homosexuality it is promptly squelched by the knowledge that in “How the Catholic church deals with sexual misconduct when more and more priests are breaking their vows of celibacy,” a 1990 article in Time magazine, Loftus indicates that priests who engage in either heterosexual or homosexual trysts don’t belong in Southdown because “If the only problem is that he fell in love, this is not the place for him.”
Loftus’ pro-homosexual and dissident sympathies have not diminished with time. Indeed as recently as Lent 2006 Loftus used his Boston pulpit to impart homosexual propaganda and undermine Church teaching when, on Ash Wednesday he boldly promoted the Brokeback Mountain, a film known to be a work of homosexual propaganda. Loftus concurrently proclaimed his notion that it is not homosexuality which is the sin, but the “sin that is before us always is our refusal to grow into the freedom for which we were born.”
Shortly after he contributes his ‘expert’ input at the inquiry Loftus will fulfill his engagement as keynote speaker at the September 2006 NACDLGM (National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries) conference in Brooklyn, New York. His topic? A rather saucy “The ultimate Good News story: Learning to Re-calibrate an Internal Compass: As St. Paul says, ‘For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else’s conscience?’” This Loftus dig may well be directed at his Church, or perhaps at individuals such as fellow Jesuit Father Paul Shaughnessy who, in his candid look at “ The Gay Priest Problem,” has no difficulty upholding the teachings of his Church (“Sodomy is a mortal sin, and this sin is compounded on the part of the priest because it involves a further violation of his promises of chastity.”)
In Sexual Abuse in the Church Loftus is adamant that “[t]here is no evidence to suggest that homosexuals are intrinsically more promiscuous, or more likely to be pedophiles” and offers no less than five references to Money to substantiate his claim before concluding that thought with: “In fact, there is some evidence to the contrary.”
Strangely enough Loftus fails to buttress the latter statement with evidence. Statistics, however, belie his claim. It is a well documented fact that while all homosexual are not necessarily promiscuous a disproportionate number are. It is also a well documented fact that while not all homosexuals molest children a disproportionate number do, and also that a disproportionate number of incidents of sexual abuse are perpetrated by men who are identified as homosexual. The facts are well laid out in a multitude of articles including Dr. Timothy Dailey’s “Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse.” As for the sex abuse scandals which have and continue to rock the Church, it is well known but infrequently reported that a startling 90-95% of clerical sexual abuse victims are teenage boys.
Loftus draws his 1989 work to a conclusion by minimizing the horror of paedophilia stating: “These men of whom we speak, the ‘sexual abusers’ in our church are not a strange new breed of degenerate monsters; they have much more in common with the rest of us that [sic] we would care to acknowledge. Often what we fear most in ourselves is most easily externalized and destroyed.”
One must conclude that Loftus believes we are, one and all, paedophiles at heart, a thought echoed by yet another clerical sexologist, Father Stephen Rosetti, President of St. Luke’s Institute. According to Engel, in his book “The Myth of the Child Molester” Rosetti “asserts that most people have pedophiliac urges, including mothers, but are able to repress them.”
Perhaps Rosetti and Loftus should speak for themselves?
As for the Loftus’ feminist side, in 1991 while still Executive Director at Southdown he penned the Forward and, in the name of Emmanuel Convalescent Foundation (Southdown) published Women in the Church: the Pain, the Challenge and the Hope and to get the feminist message delivered at a Southdown Spring Conference by Sister Lea Boutin out to a larger audience.
Boutin is a typical radical Church-feminist who bemoans patriarchy and all that she believes patriarchy must be held accountable for, including sexism which says she, “classifies human beings” and “prescribes certain roles and denies certain rights to persons on the basis of gender or sexual stereotypes,” Boutin decries what she calls “sacred” language which “legitimizes and intensifies the alienation that women feel in an androcentric language structure” and believes “The institutional Church needs moral, intellectual and spiritual conversion if Christ’s message of justice and love is to be conveyed and lived.”
Boutin quotes and references a number of radical Church feminists such as Rosemary Radford Ruether, Anne Carr, Carol Gilligan, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Mary Daly and Mary Hunt. The latter two are known lesbians, the others have been active in the ultra-radical Women’s Ordination Conference or other organizations advocating women’s ordination. Most if anot all have been active participants in feminist rituals which can only be classified as pagan and those who aren’t lesbian are outspoken homosexual/lesbian advocates.
And Loftus, a Jesuit priest, chose this “nun” to do the job of a decent holy Roman Catholic priest and provide spiritual direction to clerical sexual abusers? And he wanted this radical feminist message which has been promoted and imparted by lesbian nuns and nuns who have frolicked about in pagan rituals?
And Justice Glaude chose Loftus?
What more needs to be said?