Another Prostitution Scandal - This One Involving Senator Menendez of N.J.

A Democrat Senator goes to the Dominican Republic and hires a pair of hookers. After a few hours of fun, he doesn't pay them the agreed upon price, thus managing to stiff them both twice in a single transaction. What do you think - a game changing scandal?

The Democrat in question is Senator Bob Menendez of N.J. He is 58 years old and divorced. He is up for re-election next Tuesday. The most recent polls show that he holds a 14 point lead over his Republican challenger. The allegations against him have been raised by two prostitutes through their attorney and were published a few hours ago in the Daily Caller. Menendez himself has not yet responded to the allegations, but an aide, contacted yesterday, refused comment on the "false allegations."

Even assuming that these allegations are true, its not likely that this will be a game changer. True, client number nine, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and Rep. Anthony Weiner, both Democrats, have been brought down by sex scandals in the recent past. But, both were married at the time, and in Spitzer's case, you had the yawning hypocrisy of him having spent years prosecuting organized prostitution in New York. With Weiner, it was the ignominy of him publicly broadcasting a picture of his woody across the internet. That was too much for even Democrats to swallow.

Spitzer and Weiner aside, Democrats have a track record of being incredibly forgiving of sex scandals. Bill Clinton is the poster child for Democrat tolerance. Before him, Barney Frank's squeeze was running a gay prostitution ring out of his apartment - forgiven. Gary Studds may not have read many books, but he did bend over a few pages in the halls of Congress prior to his reelection. Scandals of all sorts swirled around Ted Kennedy, but if his murder of Mary Jo Kopechne didn't stop his repeated reelection, no mere sex scandal would. For a more detailed history of Washington sex scandals of the past fifty years, see here.

Bottom line, this scandal, standing alone, isn't going to cause a 14 point swing among New Jersey voters between now and Tuesday. The only thing Senator Menendez could do to get himself in any appreciable trouble with his constituency over this allegation would be, if it is true, to lie and cover-up. But even then, it will be long after the election before a cover-up could be proven. Between today and next Tuesday, it will be just he said she said she said. Menendez will be safely ensconced in his seat for another six years before the issue will again arise.

This is not a game changer. All that said, Menendez would be wise to lay off the Viagra and for God's sake, learn the one lesson every government official in Washington should know by now - if you are going to hire foreign hookers, pay them their full asking price.

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More Wiener . . .

He's back in the news again. Anthony. Wiener. When one just isn't enough . . .

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More On The Catholic Church Sex Scandals & The Celibacy Rule

More on the growing scandal in Germany regarding young boys abused by priests.




As to the allegation in the video that then Cardinal Ratzinger was involved in authoring an effort to impede the investiation of sexual abuse charges a decade ago, that remains to be proven. But the scandal touches Pope Benedict XVI in another way. This from the NYT:

A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he had no comment beyond the statement by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which he said showed the “nonresponsibility” of the pope in the matter. . . .

In the wake of these recent scandals - and coming on the heels of similar scandals in Ireland and the U.S. - more people in the Church are calling for a reexamination of the celibacy rules for priests - this time from the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, and Alois Kothgasser, the Archbishop of Salzburg. This from the NYT Lede:

On Thursday two senior Catholics in Austria, where reports of the sexual abuse of children by priests and nuns have been in the news, suggested that the role of priestly celibacy may need to be discussed as Catholics seek to understand and end scandals that have erupted across Europe and in the United States in recent years.

The Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, wrote in an article for a Catholic magazine that it was time for the Church to undertake an “unflinching examination” of what might be at the root of the problem of celibate clerics sexually abusing children.

As The Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent, Riazat Butt, explained on Thursday, Archbishop Schönborn wrote that the discussion should “include the issue of priest training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution,” as well as “the issue of priest celibacy and the issue of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the church and of society as a whole.”

On Thursday night, Archbishop Alois Kothgasser of Salzburg told Austrian television, “In the Church’s current situation, the question must be asked whether celibacy is an appropriate way of life for priests and an appropriate way of life for believers.”

It does not appear, however, that the Pope is willing to entertain such a discussion:

Despite all these calls for a discussion of the issue, Pope Benedict defended “the value of sacred celibacy” in remarks on Friday and said that the ancient rule would not be changed because of “passing cultural fashions.”

True, celibacy in the priesthood is an ancient tradition, but it is not as ancient as Christ himself who in fact had at least one apostle, Peter, who was married and had children. I blogged on this issue several days ago and received some interesting comments from at least one indvidual who strongly disagrees with changes to the celibacy rule or the ordination of women. You can find that post here.

The core values and morals of the Church, based on the Biblical text, must never be compromised. Having said that, the Church is foolish indeed if it is not willing to reexamine dogma not explicitly required by Biblical text when appropriate. I deeply love and respect the Catholic Church and I believe that the West, and Europe in particular, will falter and fall if it does not enjoy a resurgence in the West. Christianity is a central pillar of Western Civilization. To call the death of the Church in Europe anything other than a critical tradgedy, or to refer obliquely to the outrage and scandals of priests abusing young boys within the context of a "passing cultural fashion," is very wrongheaded indeed.

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The Catholic Church - Celibacy, Sex Scandals & Satan

The Catholic Church is contracting in the West for a variety of reasons - from the war on Christianity led by the secular left to unpopular stands on birth control to a series of scandals involving the Church, boys, male prostitutes and allegations of Vatican cover-up. The Church is deeply in need of change. One priest's ideas for change are far reaching indeed. On the other hand, for his part, the Church's Chief Excorist sees the devil's hand at work.

The Catholic Church is going through yet another series of self-created series of scandals. A scandal much like what occurred in the U.S. - accusation of decades old sexual abuse of minors and an initial Vatican cover-up - is now breaking in Germany. At least one Jesuit has admitted to sexual abuse. The scandal in Germany seems limited to about thirty claims of decades old abuse, far less than involved in the similar scandal that recently unfolded in Ireland. There have also been some recent high profile claims involving the brother of the Pope, Bishop Georg Ratzinger.

An allegation of an act of sexual abuse has surfaced in regards to a famous German boys choir that Bishop Ratzinger took over in 1964 and ran it until 1994. The alleged abuse occurred in the years before his tenure and the Bishop has denied any knowledge of the act. There have also been allegations of brutality as regards the choir, to which the Bishop admits knowing at least something about:

There have . . . been reports of severe beatings by administrators at two primary feeder schools for the choir, one in Etterzhausen and one in Peilenhofen. One director, identified as Johann M., who headed the Etterzhausen school from 1953-1992, has been cited in several allegations as being particularly abusive.

Ratzinger said boys would open up to him about being mistreated in Etterzhausen.

"But I did not have the feeling at the time that I should do something about it. Had I known with what exaggerated fierceness he was acting, I would have said something," he was quoted as saying by the German paper.

"Of course, today one condemns such actions," Ratzinger said. "I do as well. At the same time, I ask the victims for pardon."

He said he had administered corporal punishment himself.

"At the beginning I also repeatedly administered a slap in the face, but always had a bad conscience about it," Ratzinger said, adding that he was happy when corporal punishment was made illegal in 1980.

Ratzinger said a slap in the face was the easiest reaction to a failure to perform or a poor performance. How hard it was varied greatly, depending on who administered it. . . .

A slap in the face of a child in the 1960's was not uncommon. That is not any sort of scandal. It does, however, come on the heels of another high profile sex scandal, this one occuring inside the Vatican itself:

The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict's household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him. Transcripts in the possession of the Guardian suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood.

The explosive claims about Balducci's private life have caused grave embarrassment to the Vatican, which has yet to publicly comment on the affair.

While Catholicism does not condemn homosexuality outright, its teaching is that homosexual acts "are intrinsically disordered". The Catechism of the Catholic church states unequivocally: "Under no circumstances can they be approved." . . .

The seemingly never ending string of sex scandals, the declining membership in the Catholic Church in the West, and the decline in people choosing the priesthood as their life's calling have led a papist rebel, Father Kung, to challenge several of the better known dogma of the modern Catholic Church. This from the Times:

A leading Roman Catholic theologian has linked clerical sex abuse with priestly celibacy, blaming the Church’s “uptight” views on sex for child abuse scandals in Germany, Ireland and the US.

Father Hans Kung, President of the Global Ethic Foundation and professor emeritus at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said that the Church’s attitude was also revealed in its opposition to birth control.

The German church rejected any suggestion that abuse was linked to celibacy, homosexuality or church teaching.

Last week the Regensburg Diocese in Germany revealed that a former chorister claimed he was abused while a member of its choir, which was led for three decades by Father Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy See said that it backed the diocese’s attempts to investigate the scandal by analysing “the painful question in a decisive and open way”. Also last week, in the Holy See, an adult chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a Papal usher.

Robert Zollitsch, Archbishop of Freiburg and head of the German bishops’ conference, branded clerical abuse “outrageous” and begged forgiveness from the victims but denied any link between abuse and celibacy.

Writing in The Tablet, Father Kung, who in 1979 was stripped of his licence to teach Catholic theology after he rejected the doctrine of Papal infallibility, welcomed the apology but described the denials of any link between abuse, celibacy and other teaching as “erroneous”.

He said that it was the case that abuse was found also in families, schools and other churches. But he asked: “Why is it so prevalent in the Catholic Church under celibate leadership?” He said that celibacy was not the only cause of the misconduct but described it as “the most important and structurally the most decisive” expression of the Church’s uptight attitude to sex.

Citing the New Testament, he says that Jesus and St Paul practised celibacy but “allowed full freedom in this matter to each individual”. St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians wrote: “Because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” Peter and the apostles were married and their ministries did not suffer, he said, pointing out that thousands of priests protested when the new law was introduced as late as the 11th century.

Father Kung said: “Compulsory celibacy is the principal reason for today’s catastrophic shortage of priests, for the fatal neglect of eucharistic celebration, and for the tragic breakdown of personal pastoral ministry in many places.”

He argues that there are two simple solutions to the shortage of priests: “Abolition of the celibacy rule, the root of all these evils, and the admission of women to ordination. The bishops know this, but they do not have the courage to say it in public.”

I concur on all counts with Father Kung. Indeed, the rules on celibacy in the Catholic Church only date back a millenium, while the the doctrine of Papal infallibility only dates to the 19th century. Neither is explicitly supported by biblical text. For that matter, neither is the Church prohibition on all but natural means birth control. I think changes to all - plus the ordination of women - are not antithetical to anything in the Bible and are ultimately necessary to reinvigorate the Catholic Church in the Western world.



That said, others in the Church see alternate origins of their problems. This from the Times:

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican", according to the Holy See's chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon".

He added: "When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia."

He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican "cover-up" over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. "They covered up everything immediately," he said. "Here one sees the rot". . . .

A remarkably swift Vatican investigation concluded that Corporal Tornay had shot the commander and his wife and then turned his gun on himself after being passed over for a medal. However Tornay's relatives have challenged this. There have been unconfirmed reports of a homosexual background to the tragedy and the involvement of a fourth person who was never identfied.

Father Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.

Father José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Rome-based exorcist, said that Father Amorth had "gone well beyond the evidence" in claiming that Satan had infiltrated the Vatican corridors.

"Cardinals might be better or worse, but all have upright intentions and seek the glory of God," he said. Some Vatican officials were more pious than others, "but from there to affirm that some cardinals are members of satanic sects is an unacceptable distance."

Father Amorth told La Repubblica that the devil was "pure spirit, invisible. But he manifests himself with blasphemies and afflictions in the person he possesses. He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, transform himself or appear to be agreeable. At times he makes fun of me."

He said it sometimes took six or seven of his assistants to to hold down a possessed person. Those possessed often yelled and screamed and spat out nails or pieces of glass, which he kept in a bag. "Anything can come out of their mouths – finger-length pieces of iron, but also rose petals."

He said that hoped every diocese would eventually have a resident exorcist. Under Church Canon Law any priest can perform exorcisms, but in practice they are carried out by a chosen few trained in the rites. . . .

Before increasing exponentially the number of exorcists in the Church, I'd be inclined to give Father Kung's suggestions a try.

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Ethics In A Democrat Majority Congress and Massa Unleashed

Democrat Rep. Eric Masa has gone nuclear on Congress and the Obama administration. Already having announced his resignation from Congress effective at 5 p.m. today, Massa claims, with some apparent justification, that he is being railroaded out of Congress by the House leadership and Rahm Emanuel because of his refusal to vote "yes" on Obamacare. This from Massa's radio interview on Sunday:

- On the incident that is the subject of the ethics complaint against him:

“On New Year’s Eve, I went to a staff party. It was actually a wedding for a staff member of mine; there were over 250 people there. I was with my wife. And in fact we had a great time. She got the stomach flu,” he said.

Massa explained that he then danced first with the bride, who was not identified, and then with a bridesmaid. He said multiple cameras recorded the incident.

“I said goodnight to the bridesmaid,” Massa continued. “I sat down at the table where my whole staff was, all of them by the way bachelors.”

“One of them looked at me and as they would do after, I don’t know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid and his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that,” Massa said. “And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, ‘Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.’ And then [I] tossled the guy’s hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn’t right for me to be there. Now was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely. Am I guilty? Yes.”

- Massa, as to why he was being "railroaded:"

[Massa] accused Dems of a setup. Massa voted against health care legislation in Nov., and he has not been a reliable vote for Dem leadership. That, he said, has put a target on his back.

"When I voted against the cap and trade bill, the phone rang and it was the chief of staff to the president of the United States of America, Rahm Emanuel, and he started swearing at me in terms and words that I hadn't heard since that crossing the line ceremony on the USS New Jersey in 1983," Massa said. "And I gave it right back to him, in terms and words that I know are physically impossible."

"If Rahm Emanuel wants to come after me, maybe he ought to hold himself to the same standards I'm holding myself to and he should resign," Massa said.

Massa slammed House Maj. Leader Steny Hoyer for discussing a House ethics committee inquiry, accusing Hoyer of lying in an effort to eliminate an opponent of health care. Hoyer said last week he heard in early Feb. about allegations against Massa, and that he told Massa's office to report the allegations to the ethics committee.

"Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me at all, never, not once," Massa said. "Never before in the history of the House of Representatives has a sitting leader of the Democratic Party discussed allegations of House investigations publicly, before findings of fact. Ever."

"I was set up for this from the very, very beginning," he added. "The leadership of the Democratic Party have become exactly what they said they were running against."

Massa bemoaned the state of the nation's politics, which he said is perpetuated by the constant need for money to run for re-election. And, he said, he has been made an example by Dem leadership.

"There is not a single member of the Democratic freshman class [that] is going to vote against this health care bill now that they've got me," he said. "Eric Massa's probably not going to go back to Congress, because the only way I would go back there would be as an independent. A pox on both parties."

- And Massa had some particularly harsh words for Rahm Emanuel, whom he described as "the son of the devil's spawn." You can hear his riff on Emanuel here.

It is not possible, based on what we know today, to dismiss Massa's complaint that he is being railroaded. Ethics in this Democratic congress is an absolute joke. The House Ethics Committee credits the defense of the various Congressman despite all evidence to the contrary. To wit - within the past two weeks, we have been treated to Charlie Rangel being given a slap on the wrists for taking a Carribean vacation paid for by lobbyists when the rules were clear that such is an ethics violation. Rangel's defense, accepted by the Ethics Committee, was that he never received the multiple communications from his staff, by e-mail and letter, informing him of the rule. If only we applied that same degree of deference to incredulous defenses in our criminal courts, we could solve the problem of prison overcrowding immediately.

But it gets better. The same ethics committee cleared seven Congressmen, including Jim Moran and Jack Murtha, of trading pork for campaign contributions despite a series of e-mails and letters that directly spell out what was going on. Indeed, there seems little difference between the evidence used to convict Duke Cunningham and the evidence that most of the seven Congressman were trading pork for campaign contributions. The only substantive difference appears to be that the House Ethics Committee gave preference to the flat denials from the Congressman.

And since when did the Democrat Party become incensed with inappropriate conduct relating solely to sex - whether homosexual or heterosexual (and in the case of Ted Kennedy, throw in homicide). As to the heterosexual scandal, the poster boy is Bill Clinton, though JFK doing Marilyn Monroe in the oval office comes a close second. As to homosexual scandal, in 1990 Barney Frank had one of his gay pick ups running a gay prostitution ring out of Frank's apartment. Barney is still in office. In 1983, Democrat Rep. Gerry Studds received only a censure for bending over a few of the young male paiges. He too continued in office. Even if Massa's comment was more than a mere joke, the history of Democrats is that they don't care. So, it would seem Massa may have some legitimate complaint that he is being railroaded.

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