Showing posts with label child molestor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child molestor. Show all posts

Sunday, 4 September 2011

OZ SATANIST SEZ 'SATAN IS A WONDERFUL SYSTEMS MAN'

INSIDER EXPOSES FAMOUS SATANISTS
The Lizard King, Prince Phillip

Both [Prime Ministers Harold Wilson] and [Ted] Heath used to sacrifice children and the British royal family still does. Ted Heath (1916-2005) took a real delight in it…  Likewise, the British royals have public and very private lives… Prince William is being groomed for big things. He is a man to watch! ….Prince William definitely isn’t Charles’ son. Neither is Prince Harry, although his conception was out of spite as much as misplaced infatuation.

[Disclaimer:  This website opposes Fozdyke's ideology and agenda, but appreciates his revelations.]

“There is a Secret God, a Hidden God, who dwells in a spiraling tower fortress and who has guided and overseen our development from time immemorial ~ and who has remained concealed but very close to us awaiting the “future” time of re-awakening. The time of the re-awakening is near. Already we have heard the distant claps of thunder which signal the coming storm.”~ S. E. Flowers, Ph.D.

By Aloysius Fozdyke
(
henrymakow.com) 
July 30, 2011


Edward Heath was the highest initiated Satanist in Britain to become Prime Minister (1970-74.)
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Despite what some believe; based on book reading, conjecture and lies, Satanism is a label applied to a variety of spirituality and practice, from disgruntled teens slaughtering small animals in cemeteries to the rigorous methodology and practice of the Alpha Lodge.

That Lodge traces its history to Sumerian and Egypt and the cities of Babylon and Ur. Its methods actively embrace this life, this world, this physical realm, this body as a means to illumination and awakening. 

The left-hand path is not a route of escapism from reality, but a confrontation with the full totality of physical and psychic existence, encompassing pleasure and joy as well as horror, pain and mortality. 

You become a deliberate outcast!

Each grade is achieved, never simply conferred. Sometimes it takes many years for advancement ~ but you can never really leave the Lodge. There is a point of no return. Indeed, each ritual binds the participants tighter; closer to one another and the dream and nightmare Mysteries of Our Deities. We co-ordinate the actions of the left-hand path and its adherents.

The left-hand path in its purist form is always characterized by radical opposition. Its method of initiation is based on cultivating estrangement and deliberate alienation from divine, natural and human rule. Through an active and positive sacred glorification of the radical Other (Drugoy), the walker of the left-hand path steps outside previously secure borders, a self-exiled, self-determined creation of his or her own autonomous will!
This sacralized separation from the established law and custom, particularly sexual convention, is not to be confused merely with the empty acts of the social rebel ~ it is instead a God-like disdain for the restrictions that bind the uninitiated, a taking of supreme responsibility for one’s own actions.
We don’t worship Satan ~ We emulate Him!

We seek to become Gods and Goddesses in our own right.

As such, our path is inherently lonely.

One’s first cull ~ whether ceremonial or mundane ~ is always significant. 
There’s a realization that cannot be expressed.
After a cull (ritual sacrifice of a human) we try to engage in sex as quickly as is possible, for Our Mysteries are founded upon death and sex. Anal sex is one of our supreme sacraments. Properly performed it both releases and constrains. “The Wand must be bedaubed…”

SOME HISTORY

According to its Knowledge Lectures, the Alpha Lodge existed mainly in England until the nineteenth century when its operational base became the Australian colony of New South Wales. There some of the highest echelons of the landed gentry establishment embraced it.

Individuals such as Alfred Deakin and later, King O’Malley caused some problems, but by the time William Morris Hughes was Prime Minister, these obstacles had largely been overcome by focusing on the bureaucracy. We work behind the scenes.

Those with limited purpose or self-respect use what little power they are given in predictable ways. One only need observe what has happened since the Twin Towers in New York were destroyed to see how police, customs officers, security guards and other petty bureaucrats have created the sort of nameless, faceless and soulless justice that is foundational for the hierarchical future. By concentrating on the system everybody and everything falls into place. 

As my mentor Petor Narsagonan often said,
‘Satan is a wonderful systems man!’

This was learned early by the Alpha Lodge.
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At that time and well into the twentieth century, there was a libertarian strain within the Lodge. As Satan had left the tyranny of heaven to pursue freedom; freedom was what the lodge supported.

However it became increasingly apparent that the masses did not want liberty. As the Western world ~ including Australia ~ moved comfortably to the implementation of mass incarceration, right-hand path-ers had every reason to celebrate.

With surveillance cameras now in streets, in stores, at public transport stations and above the motorways; with telephone conversations that may be recorded for ‘training’ purposes; with the proliferation of government regulations, directives, policy initiatives; scanning devices and detection machines; proof of identity requirements and triplicate forms the conformist herd is comfortable!

As the future is worked out Satanists will be gold capstone of the societal pyramid.


[Left, Aussie Prime Minister] Billy Hughes caused a major problem after his attendance at the Versailles Peace Conference. 

There was a distinct possibility in the 1920s that the federated colonies of the Commonwealth of Australia would in fact become a sovereign nation. 

The same possibility was open to New Zealand and Canada. After a lot of effort on the part of Alpha Lodge initiates all over the globe, only the British colony of South Africa became a sovereign nation.

The income and influence of the left-hand path and its adherents remains intact to this day.

MEANS OF CONTROL

The right-hand path takes responsibility away from the individual by having a formal dogma, a code of ethics and behavior and by having the individual participate in an organized grouping. In that way and to varying extents the identity of the individual is taken away by belief systems which the individual has to accept, and by them accepting some higher authority, be such authority an individual, a group or an ideology. The Alpha Lodge took over these authorities ~ political parties, the military, the public service, financial institutions, the legal profession, churches, charities and others ~ by a variety of means and in this way achieved its aims.
The Church of Satan and its child, the Temple of Set are the public faces of the left-hand path.
They remain magnets for those with promise who will be invited to join or who will find more serious and clandestine branches of a very old tradition. In that regard the Order of Nine Angles in Britain is a sister ‘lodge’ to the various Alpha Lodges worldwide and increasingly so in America.

In the pedestrian world the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in Britain and the University of Texas in America remain the Alpha Lodge’s fertile recruiting grounds.

Like all modern universities, these centers of learning prepare their students for a life of work in some dismal institution, trapping them in the retirement system and creating prisoners of the State.
But unlike modern universities, these three and the University of Osaka remain at the forefront of Luciferianism. Osaka University in Japan became important in the mid-1980s owing to its relationship with of all groups, the I.R.A. Not many realize that Irish republicans have a deep and long association with Osaka University, as that university also now has with the left-hand path in Asia.
Northern Ireland has many Satanists of high caliber.
Irish Satanists are particularly into child abductions and sacrifice.
Theirs is an old, dark paganism replete with seasonal celebrations. Akin to the Order of Nine Angles, the Irish nonetheless retain their own mysteries. Some of their highest people are also members of the Alpha Lodge. Clonegal Castle and its surrounds are well known to Irish initiates.

ANTON LAVEY AND NORMAN LINDSAY
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Howard Stanton Levey (left) was originally associated with the American branch O.T.O. and it was from them that he was first taught serious Magick. Carl Kellner, Dr. Gérard Encausse, Theodor Reuss, John Yarker, Major General K.E. Haushofer and Dietrich Eckart were some heavyweights in the foundation of what is today known as the Alpha Lodge.

Their work was based in Europe but also found fertile soil in America, particularly owing to the later efforts of Edward Alexander Crowley and his connections with the British intelligence services. It was this teaching ~ via Crowley through Marvel Whiteside Parsons ~ which was the foundation of H.S. Levey’s later developments.

Whilst the Church of Satan is officially atheistic, its founder definitely wasn’t. Prior to becoming Anton LaVey, Howard Levey engaged in a number of activities which are yet to see the light of day ~ if these ever do. For example, he was at one time an associate of [Zodiac Killer] Dick Gaikowski.

It was around 1964-5, that the Alpha Lodge first made contact with him and a fruitful arrangement it turned out to be. His endearing achievements remain the Ordo Cave Lupam (just a few short years after the Profumo Affair) and its influence upon the (originally Australia- based) Black Order (of Typhon). It is a shame that he never met [foremost Australian artist] Norman Lindsay who contributed much to the Black Order’s success.

Crowley constantly stressed attracting significant and successful people into the occult world and Satanism certainly did. Prior to the 1960s many Freemasons were recruited internationally. These well placed, professional connections are still paying dividends today, particularly in Ireland, but Australia was no different.

Australian Aristocrats (particularly those with strong Norman ancestry), politicians, bureaucrats, media glitterati, social workers and even Christian clerics now worship at the altars of Satan.
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Norman Lindsay (right) was never homosexual but, that said, he enjoyed the favors of very young girls. He engaged in work surrounding the mysteries of the vagina, particularly the Kaula rites of Tantric Magick. I’m told that there are a number of bodies which were buried outside (but around) his Faulconbridge property. Nearby there are chambers beneath the ruins of a now derelict mansion that was burnt out some decades ago. I understand that these subterranean chambers have not been accessed since the 1930s, when that mansion was sold.
Norman Lindsay discovered that the use of ritual and sex created a separate world where normal morality was forgotten. Young children initiated through such rites displayed cognitive distortions, often becoming disciples of their original abusers.

Norman maintained that cruelty and violence were natural and that society’s denial of these was simply Christian hypocrisy.

Through him the Alpha Lodge in Australia began organized sexual exploitation, harnessing their rites towards power and the control of the individuals involved.
The child victims were disoriented by the robes, incense, incantations and locations. Who is going to believe a little child haunted by shame and terror talking about sexual abuse and torture at the same time they mention the bizarre aspects of ritual?
Norman maintained that secrecy and silence were the first and best lines of defense; followed of course, by the lack of credibility of the victims themselves.
Decades after his death, initiates of the Alpha Lodge proposed “subconsciously fabricated memories” as the actual cause of some of the distressing stories which have more recently seen the light of day, but it should be remembered that the earlier insights of Lindsay were foundational in the acceptance of the ‘panic’, ‘witch hunt’ and ‘hysteria’ claims of today’s denying professionals.
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(Left) A painting by Lindsay)
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If a child speaks of what occurred, they become victims of a dismissive, incredulous society and the sensationalist media circus which generates itself around the ambiguities of their stories. They are pushed to the margins of society’s conscience and consciousness, and then forgotten. It was discovered that a few evocative words was usually enough to cripple a victim with visceral flashbacks of the shame and agony being relived again and again ~ for their memories are a prison without walls.

Lindsay rediscovered that in a threatening ritual situation ~ with its heightened sense of alertness, with reaction and responses at fever pitch ~ if the chance to respond in a constructive way is denied then everyday responses to danger become dysfunctional.

In such individuals fear, anger and sadness can be manipulated to quickly escalate. Emotionally numbed and fatigued child initiates can develop a separate sense of complete difference to others together with a belief in the total power of their perpetrators.

I’m told that some of the children went on to live extraordinary lives ~ both within and outside of the Alpha Lodge ~ whilst most descended into prostitution for the Alpha Lodge, followed by early death.

In America today Norman Lindsay is worshiped by initiates as the God He is. He has become greater than the mortal He knew would die that a God may be born. His feast is twenty-one days after the Eve of All Hallows.

A young (virgin) girl is presented to the Temple, prepared by female members and initiated by the most advanced male in attendance who wishes to do so. Others may then take their turn. Her bodily juices are collected and used in later rituals, principally to consecrate or in ointments

BRITISH SATANISM
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Meanwhile in Britain, Bob Boothby and Tom Driberg, (left with Harold Wilson,) apart from being homosexuals, were also active Satanists. 

Tom’s cover of Anglo-Catholicism kept him out of a lot of bother. Both were involved behind the scenes in organizing for Harold Wilson and Edward Heath to become Prime Ministers of Britain, as Wilson was a high initiate of the left-hand path and together with Nat Rothschild, Britain is still influenced by their seminal work.

Heath, on the other hand, was the highest initiated Satanist in Britain to become Prime Minister.
Winston Churchill referred to Tom Driberg as "someone who gives sodomy a bad name.
Even occultists know little, if anything, about Bob or Ted’s visits to the ancient sacrificial Wood in Clapham, Sussex and their association with certain people in the surrounding areas.

The Wood holds some serious secrets stretching back in time to before Roman Britain and indeed it still does. From what I’ve been told, one day some of these hidden horrors will be found, but by then those involved will be long dead.

Just as in Australia, there are tunnels and caverns beneath Chequers and I’m aware that Heath used these.

Balmoral Castle also sits atop a vast expanse of underground workings.

There are secret tunnels beneath London that lead into the Earth. If you know where to look, a few of London’s subterranean ghost railway stations and the odd pub cellar are good places to start. Some of these may be natural whilst others have been constructed.

Prior to London becoming a Roman city there were mines in the area, mines that were later discovered and used. Indeed, it would be true to state that thousands of people could live in the tunnels and caverns beneath the City as there are abundant water sources.

The crowning, in-your-face audacity of the British Establishment was to name the bunker beneath the Ministry of Defence ‘Pindar’ ~ after the Greek poet, of course!

Both Wilson and Heath used to sacrifice children and the British royal family still does. Ted Heath took a real delight in it, or so I’m told. Apparently he used to engage in ritual outside of London on a Common associated with Francis Dashwood.

Likewise, the British royals have public and very private lives. Their obsession with hidden, esoteric traditions stretching back millennia is nothing short of amazing.
Prince William is being groomed for big things. He is a man to watch!
The Dark Lord, Peter Mandelson, (left) apart from being openly gay, is one of the highest initiates in the United Kingdom. He was trained in the hebdomadry system of Magick, the same system used by both the Alpha Lodge and the Order of Nine Angles. 
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His close associations with international business figures and the Bildberg group have been of great, indeed inestimable use to the left-hand path.
Following well thought out and well honed traditions, his dream is a prison-grid global community. He loves to control.
And ‘Mandy’ as he’s known to those who know him best, is as sharp and dangerous as a stiletto.
It is Mandelson who has helped turn Europeans into serfs for Europe’s banks. Europe is now reverting to a neo-feudalism structure with bankers as the overlords of their indentured citizenry. Britain, America and the rest of the world will go the same way. Kleptocratic politicians are merely vassals.

If current debts were simply wiped off of the books the only tragedy would be the destruction of the ‘too big to fail’ banks.

While politicians call that a catastrophe it would actually be freedom for millions of disenfranchised debt-serfs. That’s why it must not happen ~ and won’t!
Wages will continue to be cut even as taxes are increased to service the debt owed to the Banker Lords. Politicians everywhere are bowing and scraping before their Lords, promising deeper cuts and higher taxes. 

ED:The aim of the Alpha Lodge remains illiteracy rates in the western world of at least sixty-six percent by 2010 and the destruction of at least seventy percent of the globe’s population by the year 2030.
This is as it should be and will effectively cripple economies around the world.

Protectionism under the guise of ‘Fair Trade’ will be shortly implemented after the American crash.

This is what the filth want and we will give them what they want ~ taxation, poverty and war.
The next war will start in Iran but will bring the entire Islamic world into conflict with the [Christ]tian west. Right-hand pathers like nothing better than wars and killing.

For long before I was born the Alpha Lodge has been orchestrating to give them what they want.

After the next big war we will be in a position to take over everything that is left.
“For these fools of men and their woes care not thou at all! They feel little; what is, is balanced by weak joys; but ye are my chosen ones…Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve.”
Living most of his life as a repressed homosexual urolagnist and having been taught to be cautious; Mandy’s viciousness, cunning and polished, diplomatic persona are his enduring trademarks. Just don’t get in his way.

He lives by the left-hand path code of honour, loyalty and revenge. It was Mandelson who was instrumental in the death of James Rusbridger, particularly in the sordid way his ‘suicide’ was made to look.

PRINCESS DIANA

Hekate and Diana are both Goddesses of the night and the Alma bridge tunnel sits beneath crossroads. Indeed, when looking at the memorial on the ground floor of Harrods ~ complete with the more obvious fish bladder and chalice ~ little is left to the imagination. And the flaming torch ~ it’s everywhere, even on her grave.

Indeed, one of the things the flaming torch represents ~ apart from a Wand ~ is the golden semen of the thirteen royal families of Europe.

Diana was largely kept out of the inner workings of the British royal family owing to her inability to toe the line. After the birth of William, she was expendable and rightly so. She’d served her purpose. Her death was merely icing on the cake.

Princess Diana was a sheep among wolves. She was chosen owing to her Stuart blood. [Her stepfather] Peter Shand Kydd did more in the colonies than raise sheep. He was initiated into the Alpha Lodge some years before Norman Lindsay died, or so I’m told. I’ve no idea if they ever met, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Both loved the fairer sex and monogamy was impossible.

His mission was to break up the already troubled marriage of Diana’s parents with a view to causing emotional problems for her. He succeeded! Poor, beautiful, doe-eyed and stupid Diana never achieved much intellectually and was therefore perfect for her purpose.

Prince William definitely isn’t Charles’ son. Neither is Prince Harry, although his conception was out of spite as much as misplaced infatuation.

William’s father is a citizen of the world but is based in France.

I’ve never met him, but those who have are impressed and fearful.

If Satan has a vice-regent on Earth it is Him.

For much greater depth into these matters, Please refer to a piece posted earlier here:

SATANISM IS REAL: PART TWO: CONFESSIONS OF A SATANIST



Monday, 7 March 2011

NEW REVELATION OF CHILD-MOLESTING CATHOLIC PRIESTS IN PHILADELPHIA

LET US PREY

March 04, 2011
by Michael Hoffman
"Alas, Most Holy Father! At times obedience to you leads to eternal damnation.”
 ~ St. Catherine of Siena, Letter to Pope Gregory IX, A.D. 1376

After all the papal rhetoric and the penitential scene in Dublin, Ireland in January where Catholic prelates dramatically “lay prostrate" on the floor of St. Mary’s Cathedral (in preference to the floor of a jail cell), to "show forth their profound remorse,” in an “act of contrition” which "went to unusual lengths to involve victims and to gaze unflinchingly at their suffering” ~ comes another can of worms, this one out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (see report, below), to be followed, surely, by more rhetoric, lament and “unflinching gazes.”
The Roman Catholic Church is, in certain respects, especially at the top of the obelisk, a secret society, and shares with all other such fraternities, the lack of accountability which their secrecy affords.
This, together with cooperation from corrupt prosecutors (as in Los Angeles, where the notorious criminal Cardinal Roger Mahony was allowed to slither into luxurious retirement scott-free), and Boston (where the notorious criminal Cardinal Bernard Law was allowed to flee "south of the border” to luxurious outlaw refuge in Vatican City, where “Blessed Pope John Paul the Great” made him arch-priest of a basilica), guarantees that more Catholic boys will be preyed upon.
Why aren’t there thousands of protesting priests and nuns filling St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, like the crowds in Cairo and Tripoli, demanding that the Vatican molestation imperium be cleaned out with an iron broom, beginning with Pope Benedict himself?
The nauseating complacency from clerics, religious and laity is overwhelming testimony to systemic apathy and moral rot.
What could be worse than an institutionalized assault on the chastity of children, in the name of Jesus Christ’s Church, across decades, including, as in Ireland, long before Vatican Council II?
Many Catholics can’t face this as effectively and militantly as they should, because to do so would call into question keystones of the papal monarchy itself (and that’s what it is, an elected monarchy, with the pope as absolute sovereign and the clerical mafia that surrounds him serving as the royalty).
As in Orthodox Judaism, where clear lines of hierarchical distinction are drawn between the superior Holy People and the inferior gentiles, a traditional Catholic priest once divulged to this writer the secret gnosis that was imparted to him, that the souls of priests are higher than those of all other souls in God’s eyes, due to their ordination as priests. 

On the basis of that erroneous theology, on Sept. 8, 2001, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, in his office as "Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy” with oversight of priests worldwide, wrote a letter to a French bishop congratulating him for protecting a molester-priest from the French police. Hoyos called Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux in northern France, a model for all bishops for his handling of the case:
"You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.”
(Cardinal Hoyos defended himself by saying that his letter to Bishop Pican was sent at the behest of Blessed Pope John Paul the Great).

The “higher souled” priest who preyed on youth, could not be exposed to the kind of negative publicity and prosecution that you or I would face if we were found guilty of these heinous acts; hence, the superior-souled priest must be shielded, Hoyos ruled.

Cardinal Hoyos remains a hero to traditional Catholics and he has been defended from the controversy which his letter generated by traditional Bishop Bernard Fellay. Hoyos is President Emeritus of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei,” which was allegedly formed for  for the regularization of the Latin Tridentine Mass. He is currently honored with the post of "Cardinal-Priest of SS. Nome di Maria al Foro Traiano."

In advocating a cover-up, Hoyos exhibited the operating logic of every freemasonry, every synagogue and every mafia on earth that protects its guilty members. Until the cover-up policy is overthrown by a radical reform of Vatican bureaucratic secrecy, nothing will change with regard to Catholic child predation, except that the ritual gestures and malarkey from the pope (who seated Mahony in a place of honor during the recent papal visit to the cathedral at Washington D.C.), will increase in melodrama and frequency.

It is too bad that prosecutors in the West have never once slapped the cuffs on a child predation-facilitating bishop or cardinal and perp-walked him to jail with the cameras rolling. Maybe then, faced with life imprisonment, someone like Mahony would finally, for once in his life, stop lying, and someone like Bishop Skylstad of Spokane, Washington, would finally recover from his remarkable, prolonged amnesia about what parishioners testified to him concerning molester priests. Until then, the “princes” of the Church enjoy continued worldwide immunity from prosecution. Coincidence or conspiracy?

Until the Roman Catholic Church stops being a secret society, until priests are made aware that their souls are inherently no higher or better than the soul of any other sinner, and until cops, judges and prosecutors begin to do their jobs and enforce the law without favoritism, Catholic children will continue to be molested in the Church that bears the sacred name of Jesus Christ. What could be more demonic?


Hoffman’s writing and research are entirely reader-funded, through donations and the sale of his books, newsletters and broadcasts.

 
FEAR IN PHILADELPHIA
THAT ABUSIVE PRIESTS ARE STILL ACTIVE

By Katherine Q. Seelye
March 4, 2011 

Philadelphia

Three weeks after a scathing grand jury report accused the Philadelphia Archdiocese of providing safe haven for as many as 37 priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward minors, most of those priests remain active in the ministry.

The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes ~ “on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey,” as the grand jury put it ~ has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church since it became engulfed in the sexual abuse scandal nearly a decade ago.

The extent of the scandal here, including a cover-up that the grand jury said stretched over many years, is so great that Philadelphia is “Boston reborn,” said David J. O’Brien, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Dayton, referring to the archdiocese where widespread sexual abuse exploded in public in 2002. 


Some parishioners say they feel discouraged and are caught in a wave of anxiety, even as they continue to attend Mass. “It’s a tough day to be a faith-filled Catholic,” Maria Shultz, 43, a secretary at Immaculata University, said after Mass last weekend at St. Joseph’s Church in suburban Downingtown. But Mrs. Shultz, who has four daughters, expressed no doubt about how the church should deal with the 37 priests. “They should be removed immediately,” she said.

The church has not explained directly why these priests, most of whom were not publicly identified, are still active, though it is under intense pressure to do so. Cardinal Justin Rigali initially said there were no active priests with substantiated allegations against them, but six days later, he placed three of them, whose activities had been described in detail by the grand jury, on administrative leave. He also hired an outside lawyer, Gina Maisto Smith, a former assistant district attorney who had prosecuted child sexual assault cases for 15 years, to lead a re-examination of the cases.

“There is a tremendous sense of urgency here,” Mrs. Smith said in an interview this week at the archdiocese, where she said she and a team had been working around the clock, without interference from the church hierarchy. “They’ve given me the freedom and the independence to conduct a thorough review,” she said, with “unfettered access to files.” She added that announcements about her initial review would be coming “sooner rather than later.” “The urgency is to respond to that concern over the 37, what that means, how that number was derived and what to do in response to it,” she said.

Philadelphia is unusual in that the archdiocese has been the subject of not one but two grand jury reports. The first, in 2005, found credible accusations of abuse by 63 priests, whose activities had been covered up by the church. But there were no indictments, mainly because the statute of limitations had expired. This time, the climate is different.

When the grand jury issued its report on Feb. 10, the district attorney immediately indicted two priests, a parochial school teacher and one who had left the priesthood, on charges of rape He also indicted a high-ranking church official on charges of endangering the welfare of children ~ the first time the courts have reached into the church hierarchy in the sex scandal in the United States.  (May God bless this prosecutor ~ Hoffman). All four are due in court on March 14.

When the archdiocese learns of reports of sexual abuse, it is now supposed to report them to the district attorney, which is what led to the most recent grand jury investigation. Extensions on the statute of limitations also made prosecutions possible this time. But even with these changes, some were surprised to see the grand jury paint a picture of a church where serious problems still festered. “The thing that is significant about Philadelphia is the assumption that the authorities had made changes and the system had been fixed,” said Terence McKiernan, the president of
BishopAccountability.org, which archives documents from the abuse scandal in dioceses across the country. “But the headline is that in Philadelphia, the system is still broke.”

The grand jury said 20 of the active priests were accused of sexual abuse and 17 others were accused of “inappropriate behavior with minors.” In response, Cardinal Rigali issued a statement the day of the report, saying, “I assure all the faithful that there are no archdiocesan priests in ministry today who have an admitted or established allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against them.” 

The phrasing spoke directly to the church’s policy of “zero tolerance” of priests who sexually abuse minors. If any active priests have such allegations against them, the policy calls for their suspension until the charges are resolved. Still, six days later, he placed three priests on administrative leave ~ a tacit acknowledgment that perhaps there were priests facing such accusations.

Leonard Norman Primiano, a Roman Catholic who heads the department of religious studies at Cabrini College in suburban Radnor, said he was surprised that the archdiocese had not moved more quickly to suspend the 37 priests, given the “zero tolerance” policy. “It’s astonishing that they wouldn’t be as vigilant about placing a priest in a parish on leave if there were any question about that priest’s activity,” he said, acknowledging that a suspension could be devastating for a priest who is falsely accused.

The uncertain fate of the 37 active priests, whose names the archdiocese turned over to the district attorney, all but guarantees a continuing spectacle here. So do the indictments, a flurry of civil suits against the church, the continued stepping forward of victims and the potential for courtroom drama.

Three weeks into the scandal, the archdiocese said it was not clear how much the revelations had hurt attendance at Mass and donations. Daniel E. Thomas, an auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia, said he had heard both sides: some parishioners were attending church more to pray for the victims and “the good priests, the faithful priests,” and some have told him, “We’re angry, we’re confused and we’re distressed.”

He also said that some priests had told him that donations were not down but that he was aware of “at least a few people who have said, ‘I’m not going to be giving to the church’ ” and that some were not fulfilling their pledges to give to the church’s capital campaign. He said money for the capital campaign goes specifically to help the church fulfill its charitable mission; it cannot go toward the defense of priests or legal fees, he said, and so only the poor, the sick and the needy would suffer if those donations dried up. (Jon Hurdle contributed reporting).