Why do my sister and many Catholic friends hold popes like Francis and Leo in high esteem, while I believe these pontiffs and numerous U.S. prelates (like Mahony, Lucas, McElroy, Gregory, Cupich, Knestout, Lori, etc.) deserve to be placed behind bars? The reason is that their knowledge of Leo, like that of his predecessor Pope Francis and other bishops, is often based on input they receive from complicit mainstream and Catholic media sources like the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), Catholic News Agency, Catholic News Service, and various Catholic publications and websites.
What my sister and many Catholic friends fail to understand is that, as a priest in whom many people confide, and after years of pastoral and supervisory experience, I am privy to information that is often not known to the media or covered up by Church officials. Also, because I am not homosexually oriented and am very pro-life and pro-family, I will address topics that most Catholics will not hear addressed in their parishes, pastored either by pro-LGBTQ homosexual priests or straight priests who fear being removed from ministry or laicized if they were to address clerical sexual abuse, as well as consensual homosexual and heterosexual clerical misconduct in the Catholic Church.
One reason few priests can write about clerical sexual predation and misconduct is that, at one point in time, they may have been compromised and can be subject to blackmail. Even though I was propositioned by an archbishop, two priests, and two seminarians who were later made monsignors, none of them succeeded in getting me into their beds. Interestingly, I learned that one of the two priests who tried to talk me into a threesome, six years earlier, had drugged and sodomized a U.S. Marine Corps veteran while he was a seminarian studying for the Diocese of San Diego. That abused veteran, Mark Brooks, who died a young death, inspired my upcoming co-authored novel (with Denver novelist David Tracy) based on my screenplay, Den of Iniquity. Inspired by true-life events involving many gay bishops, priests, and seminarians, the novel, which we hope to publish this year while I am still alive and able to write, would most certainly have appeared on the Church’s former Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) that was first introduced in 1560 and was discontinued in 1966.
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