Paul Malpas

The purpose of this posting today is to garner as much comment as I can possibly engender on two very vexatious subjects that have been brought to my attention this last weekend.  I want an open debate on both topics, so read on and start pressing the keys with your ideas.

The first topic was brought on by two e-mails I received.  The first from the Netherlands outlining the scenario, the second came from an expert who I had asked to comment on the first e-mail and said “Cardio-vascular syphilis usually occurs 10-30 years after the initial infection.  The most common complications are a syphilitic aortitis which may result in aneurism formation”

The first e-mail outlined a scenario in a Catholic Diocese in England sometime round the beginning of the Second World War.  This Diocese had, in its diocesan area, a large dockland, at this time full of ships of all nationalities and unfortunately, one of the cathedral chapter, a priest of large reputation and great promise, had let his emotion and natural instinct run wild and in a one night stand with a member of this itinerant population contracted that most terrible and insidious of diseases, that ignorer of station, syphilis.

Now, in late 1939 or early 1940 in the days before penicillin and before latex barrier protection was freely available this disease ran unchecked throughout the population, the only cure to non-contraction was abstinence and to virile young men in their early 30s this might have been difficult, especially to priests whose opportunities you would think might have been scarce.

The effects of syphilis are numerous and the reader if he or she so desires can immediately get chapter and verse by googling the word.  Suffice it to say that the disease comes in four stages;

Primary syphilis which occurs within a couple of weeks of contact and produces a painless, itch-free chancre on the penis, vaginal wall or rectal tissue of the victim and is often not detected.

Secondary syphilis which occurs four to ten weeks after the contact and produces a highly detectable diffuse rash on palms of hand and soles of feet.

Latent syphilis which has no symptoms and is non-infectious and occurs about a year after contact.

Tertiary syphilis which as my e-mail says occurs 10-30 years after contact and has neurological and cardiac symptoms and leads to aortic aneurisms amongst other things.

As I said the disease is insidious, a slow ticking time bomb in the human body

The good priest might have been unaware of the primary stage or chose to ignore it, but he could not be unaware or hide the secondary phase a few weeks later where in most cases the disease becomes apparent.

The Bishop, a good friend, was not surprised by this event (it must have been common in these celibate men), had to work swiftly.  He was unable to solve the problem, but he had to divert this man’s career from Episcopal glory, so he sent him back to his former position as a teacher at an all boys school, realising his talents would be wasted in parish work.

Unfortunately the priest’s libido continued to run unchecked and by the time he entered the latent stage of the disease a year later, he was well enough aware of his problems to realise that he was now non-infectious and could take his pleasures out on the ever changing mass of pupils.  He had hit the jackpot; episcopacy now did not matter.  These virginal schoolboys could not be infected and what is more important, they could not infect him.

This poor but enlightened priest devoted his spare time to impressing the hierarchy with his talents and eventually after 10 years incident free hard work, managed to bowl over his friend the Bishop, who could not equate the hairy arsed sailor with the chaste schoolboy and so promotion followed.

Promoted to head honcho in this enclosed society, his wildest dreams ran amok for 15 or 16 years until the tertiary stage of his illness clicked in and early onset dementia and constricted small pupils were apparent.  He died in his very early 60s of an aortic aneurism.  The Age of Terror was over.

I would here, just like to insert a poem by Michael Harding which he sent me today.  The sentiment sad, the grief palpable.

Dead Man in Langho, Lancashire

The other question I would like answering and by all means put me straight if you disagree.  Why is it that mature Catholic women go all a-flutter in the presence of priests?  They seem to change character when a priest walks in the room. They become young girls once again, flirting with the reverend, putting him in a position he hardly wants to refuse.

This question came to me when reading about this very well respected pastor, Fr. Emanuel Isi, in a parish in Birmingham, Alabama in America getting severely beaten up in the early hours of a morning last week.  Not by an opportunist drug addict in need of money for a quick fix but by an irate husband intent on revenge for the priest’s misdemeanour in laying his wife.

My dear wife made me start thinking of this problem as she had noticed this phenomenon many times in her long life and could never understand why these very decent ladies knowing that what they were doing was probably worth at least two mortal sins, yet continued to do it without a moment’s hesitation.

What is amazing when you sit back and think about the problem, why this behaviour is not questioned or researched more?  We all know several ladies who have given their all to a priest, there is a clutch of them in every parish, yet nobody seems to condemn it.

You cannot blame the priests, because it is a natural urge.  It is hard enough dealing with celibacy without turning a sure thing down.  When it is offered like it generally is, you have almost to be a bishop to refuse.  So why do women, so reticent when a layman calls, throw themselves into the unaccustomed arms of a priest without a moments forethought?

All the talk these days is of paedophile behaviour amongst priests but this aberration belongs to only a very small percentage of these men of God, but everyone knows that most well balanced, honourable priests have their pick of the parochial lady, some likely lads with one or two in tow.

Do these good Catholic ladies think that it is not really a sin and that their generous act brings them closer to God or do they think that a priest is a man and therefore he needs all the help he can get to ferry him through his lonely hum-drum life?  As Baroness Scotland recently said, “bring him home and give him a glass of wine”.  What is wrong with going that extra mile and giving him that come-hither look?

My editor called back and asked whether I thought that this second thought was exaggerated.  Well it is because half the priests are probably of a homosexual tendency and cannot avail themselves of the fruit on the tree, but believe you me this brave legion of ladies are there in every parish, waiting patiently with loins well ungirded for the bishop to go into the  transfer market for a brawny six-footer.

This last thought was brought home to me for certain when in today’s Guardian newspaper there is an article about a court case in Rome where two young Italian men are being prosecuted for blackmailing hundreds of hardworking homosexual priests at the rate of 10000 euros per head.  Asked where did they get this type of money from the priests explained that they took it out of the collection boxes.  Jason Berry in his new and well researched book Render Unto Rome is uncannily correct when he considers the Catholic Church is the biggest black economy in the world.

I have just been watching the film by Jason Berry of Marciel Maciel, a Mexican Catholic priest, who formed the religious orders of Legion Of Christ for men and Regnum Christie for women.  Both orders have massive support in the Americas and since the 1940s Maciel had been fund raising and building seminaries there for fledgling priests.   Numbering among his many benefactors is Carlos Slim, reputed to be the world’s richest man with a net worth of $53.5 billion.  Maciel was nearly canonized before he died, so highly did the Vatican think of him.

However from the late 1990s allegations of abuse and sexual malpractice against this man started to arise, so much so that Pope John Paul II ordered an investigation into Maciel’s organization and personal habits.  Before this investigation could bear fruit, Maciel became ill and the Vatican decided to close down the proceedings so that he could die with dignity, and this he did in 2002.

Suspicions and allegations still hung around however and eventually it came out that the man was not only a serial abuser of his own priests and seminarians, he also had women in Spain, Mexico and America who bore him children on a regular basis that were also abused by him.  Not only that but he had been putting money aside for his own use out of benefactors donations to build and develop property in various countries.  Certainly in Spain where he has at least three children.

This fact came to life when three of these Spanish children came forward with legal documents proving that they were his children and had beneficial ownership of properties that the Church was trying to claw back from his estate.  Last year Ratzinger set up another investigation into the man and his empire.  It is a television programme not to miss.  It is called Vows Of Silence. There is another by director Mary Healey called Holy Watergate.  Both these films show how it was in America, we have yet got it to come.

You just wonder about Maciel, with all his shagging how he had time for mass and prayer.  The only good thing in his favour is that he followed up John Paul II’s teaching on birth control.  He never used a johnnie.

Funnily enough when I get thinking about clerical abusers my mind always turns to Thomas Duggan, the bane of many a young boy’s life in Manchester in the 1950s and 60s.  For any of you who missed them, my blogs The Aftermath of a St. Bede’s Education on 5th April 2010, Monsignor Thomas Duggan on 31st March 2010 andThe Staff of St. Bede’s College on 18th March 2010 explain in some detail what this unholy man was about.  From correspondence I am receiving you all say that in the light of this recent clerical abuse scandal, as a man you reached for your keyboards to see if at long last  Tommy Duggan had been outed.  There was nothing at all about him only my blog but it strikes me that their first reaction says a lot.  Within the letters and e-mails received are the following bare bones of his life:-

Born in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in about 1906

Educated at St. Bede’s College     1917-1923

Member of Staff at St. Bede’s        1933-1936  &  1940-1950

Rector of St. Bede’s                            1950-1966

Priest at St. Mary’s, Langho            1966-1968

Died in Langho, which is to the north of Blackburn in 1968.

From these bones a few questions need to be asked:-

1 )  Where was he between the years 1923-1928?  Presumably at a seminary.

2 )  Where was he between the years 1928-1933?

3 )  Where was he between the years 1936-1940?  I did hear he had some Vatican training but when and in what form.

4 )  With no offence to the people of Langho, why was he moved at short notice to this isolated place?  He was a powerful man in the diocesan hierarchy, why would his obvious talents be helpful to Langho?  Geoff Burke, the incoming Monsignor and Rector said in Baeda’s winter edition 1968 that he was sent on “new work which the Lord Bishop has asked him to do in the parish”.  In my experience any priest who is sent up north at a minute’s notice has sinned most greviously.

If anyone out there  can confirm or deny the above presumed facts please get in touch or if they can add anything to the pot or speak of their experiences contact me on e-mail at malpas46@eircom.net.  My main area of concern with this man is his abuse of power by physically, mentally and sexually assaulting the pupils under his control in the 16 years he was Rector of St. Bede’s College.  There is a hell of a lot of hurt out there even after 50 or 60 years.

Please continue to write into me about Duggan with any little morsel so that my report can be finished and sent off to all those past pupils who contribute and also to the Salford Diocesan Authorities.  All we can really hope for is an apology, but from correspondence received it is obvious this man blighted many young Catholic boys’  lives