Many don’t ask “What caused Church scandals?” So, they do not find what caused the wave of a few hundred child molesters among 50,000 priests that washed through the Catholic clergy between 1965 and 1985.
What did happen? How did these criminals get into, and through seminaries? History gives us answers.
In the late 1940s, a woman named Bella Dodd left her position in America’s Communist Party and became a Catholic. She had spent previous decades working herself to be the #3 person in the Party structure, and was in charge of education.
After her conversion, she testified, under oath, that “The Communist Party hated the Catholic Church because it helped keep the Communists from taking over Spain. To weaken and destabilize The Church, the Party infiltrated over 1,100 men into the Catholic Priesthood.”
Those familiar with the period are not surprised. Communist agents were also infiltrated into National Security Agencies in every government. If the FBI and CIA could not keep them out, how could The Church?
When these men got into The Church, they worked together, weaving a web of deceit and sham, corrupting The Church wherever they could. As they undermined theological principles, they focused on seminaries.
“If we can get sexual predators ordained, they will do damage for decades! When they are caught, we will pretend we are ‘curing’ them with psycho-therapy, counseling, and medication! Then, they will be free to go on doing damage for years!”
For Communist destroyers, the sexual predators would be the “gift that keeps on giving”.
When the evil is graphed, we see that it had a beginning and an end. The wave of molestations took place between 1965 and 1985. Today, almost forty years afterwards, they are still, to the evil one, “the gift that keeps on giving”.
Even today, almost forty years after the “big wave”, ambitious prosecutors, contingent fee attorneys, and profiteers continue to do damage. They make themselves look good while making The Church look bad.
The Church has not been fast to explain what caused the 1% of infiltrators. Like Judases in every age, they have provided a true “Test of Faith”.
