Child Touch For Me, But Not For Thee

And: Trump & Trans Troops; Studies Show DEI Increases Hatred

A reader sent me the photo above of a priest viewing, in the company of children, the relic of St. Jude the Apostle, which has been touring the country with Father Carlos Martins. That priest should have been more careful; he shouldn’t have touched a child’s shoulders like that. If he did rest his hands on the girl’s shoulders, I don’t think the priest did a thing wrong. But priests can’t be too careful these days. Father Martins, custodian of that relic, was kicked out of a parish hosting the relic, and his tour shut down, because he touched a little girl’s hair inside the church, in full view of hundreds of people, and her father went ballistic? If only that priest knew what he was risking, right?

Well, here’s news: he’s the very priest who saw to it shortly after that photo was taken that Father Martins was kicked out of his parish church (the one pictured above). That priest, Father Michael Lane, then humiliated Father Martins by releasing a press statement worded such that most people would read as if Father Martins had been accused of some sort of sexual wrongdoing with a child. Those children seen above are from the Queen of Apostles parish school (zoom in on their badges).

Here, from the Queen of Apostles church website, is the priest in question (“moderator” is what they’re calling “pastor” these days, in merged parishes).

It’s a good thing that the little girl on whose shoulders Father Lane has his hands does not have a father who flew off the handle and called the police because a Catholic priest put his hands on her shoulders while viewing a sacred relic in church. It does make one wonder, though, why Father Lane trashed Father Martins, not only by cancelling the exposition of the relic, but — far, far worse, in my view —turning this into a crypto-sexual incident by alerting the Safe Environment office, and putting out a press statement under his name that Father Lane had to have known would be interpreted as thinking Father Martins had been accused of doing something sexual to a child, instead of only touching a lock of her hair as he was joshing with a group of schoolkids about his own baldness. From the parish’s statement:

When I first saw that, my heart skipped a beat. I assumed from the wording that my friend Father Carlos, a man I admire and respect, had been caught doing something evil with children. This struck me as so unbelievably out of character that it could not be true! And yet, I have been grievously wrong about this kind of thing before. And hey, the “Safe Environment” policies had been violated! Sounds very serious, no?

In fact, all Father Lane and the other priest who put the statement out had to have said is “no sexual contact is alleged to have occurred.” Why didn’t he, and they? The bishop, according to the statement, had already cancelled Father Martins. An overreaction, I think, but still, why didn’t the bishop insist on making it clear that Father Martins was not being accused of sexual misconduct with a child? After all, Father Lane and the diocese had the basic facts from the police at the time.

I understand why people are mad at The Pillar, a publication I respect, for going with a story based on a diocesan press release, and I wish The Pillar had waited for more information before publishing. J.D. Flynn, the editor, tells me they reached out to the Diocese of Joliet for more information, as well as tried to find Father Martins, before publishing, but got no response. [UPDATE: The Pillar’s new story reports that they had tried reaching Fr Martins, but had no success.] I understand why it would be hard to find Father Martins, who works in his ministry independently. But the Diocese of Joliet has a communications office. I don’t know what happened here — notice if you click through that the statement does not come from the Diocese of Joliet, but from Queen of Apostles parish — but I’m wondering if the communications team at the diocese saw Father Lane’s statement before it went out. If so, it seems to me basic responsibility that they would have added a line making it clear that nothing sexual is alleged to have happened. The girl’s dad demanded that the police charge Father Martins with “battery”. Under Illinois state law, this is the definition of battery:

Touching a little girl’s hair is battery, according to the child’s father. Not “sexual battery,” which is a different offense. Once more: I think that is a bizarre and cruel judgment, and to attempt to raise it to a criminal matter is hysterical. In fairness, I recognize that the parish and the diocese had to make this matter public, given the history of the Catholic Church, and this disgraced diocese in particular. But for God’s sake, do so with as much information as you reasonably can, to avoid smearing a priest. Though I wish The Pillar had handled this differently, given the extreme sensitivity of the matter, I must tell you that standard journalistic ethics permits publications to go with a story based only on an official statement from the government or institutions, like the Catholic Church. It wasn’t The Pillar who made this public; it was Father Lane and the parish, in the official press statement.

Result: run “Carlos Martins” through your search engine. All you see is reference to this controversy, with no specifics alerting readers that this incident was not sexual.

I wonder how Father Lane would feel if the father of the little girl on whose shoulders he innocently rested his hands (unless they are hovering) alleged “battery” in a complaint to the police, and the parish or the diocese put out such a statement about him. He would justifiably be shocked and traumatized that his name and reputation was being trashed in public as some sort of molester. In my initial tweet based on the Pillar report (which, again, was based only on the parish’s official statement), I assumed that Father Martins was being accused of sexual misconduct. As soon as Pillar editor J.D. Flynn responded on that Twitter thread that there is no reason to assume the contact was sexual, I moved to delete that comment and re-word it. But before I did, I noticed that an anonymous commenter chided me for not concluding in my own tweet that a child had been sexually assaulted by a priest. Not “accused of,” but had actually done it!

This is how people are these days, over two decades after Boston. After this, I don’t know how poor Father Martins gets his reputation back. But I know, based on the photo above, of Father Lane touching a child’s shoulders — not her hair, but her shoulders — at the very same event for which he threw Father Martins to the dogs … I know that Father Lane has a lot of explaining to do.

Maybe there’s more to the story. My opinion may change if more information surfaces. But for now, this appears to me like a case of church officials panicking, and making a sacrifice of Father Martins and his reputation — this, on the very week that Father Martins published his first book, The Exorcist Files, which is excellent and important and that every Christian should read. In my 22 years of writing about the Catholic sex abuse scandal, a miserable task that cost me my Catholic faith, I have heard from parish priests who are terrified of exactly this happening: that the institutional Church will throw them to the wolves based on the slightest provocation, however groundless, in an effort to protect their own backsides. That is, to overcompensate for the many years of turning a blind eye to actual clerical molesters.

I remind you that the Diocese of Joliet, under a previous bishop, has a grotesque record on this front; the Illinois Attorney General formally accused one of Joliet’s previous bishops, the late Joseph Imesch, who ran that diocese from 1979 until 2006, of systematically covering up clerical sexual abuse of children:

According to the AG's findings surrounding the Diocese of Joliet, "When these errors came to light years later, the diocese often rejected opportunities for transparency and healing, refusing to publicly list extern or religious order priests who had ministered in the diocese and had been convicted or otherwise substantiated as a child sex abuser.

"With but one exception, the diocese did not make such disclosures until 2019 in response to the Attorney General’s investigation. In some cases, clear evidence that an extern or religious order priest sexually abused a child was sitting in the diocese’s files, but it took Attorney General investigators pointing it out in order for the diocese to publicly disclose the priest."

Of course the Diocese of Joliet and its clergy are hypersensitive to this kind of thing happening today! This is completely understandable. What is incomprehensible is that given the context, both in that diocese and nationwide, that they would subject a priest, Father Martins, who did nothing more than what the parish’s own pastor did at the same event (and in one sense even less; touch the locks of a child’s hair is less invasive than touching a child’s shoulders), to public contempt and humiliation. True, neither Father Lane nor the diocese could remain silent about this after the child’s father made a criminal issue of it with police. But they could easily have made it clear from the beginning that the incident was in no way sexual, and that the incident in question took place not in some hidden room of the parish church, but in full view of hundreds of visitors.

Based on the photo above, of Father Lane and children viewing the St. Jude relic in Queen of Apostles parish, the moderator who released to the world a statement that has for now wrecked the reputation of Father Martins is apparently guilty of the same thing, at the same event. Father Lane is doing just fine today, and might even be hailed by some ignorant people as a vigilant protector of children; Father Martins, by contrast, is fighting for his good name.

Some wonder why institutions have lost the trust of the people. In the Catholic Church’s case, it’s over its handling of the abuse scandal. This outrageous injustice to Father Martins in the Diocese of Joliet is one more example — though not the kind to which we are accustomed.

Trump To Kick Transgender Troops Out?

Citing Pentagon sources, The Times of London reported yesterday that Donald Trump plans to issue an executive order forcing the military’s estimated 15,000 transgender troops to accept a medical discharge and leave the armed forces. A Trump spokeswoman denied the report:

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t decided whether to boot transgender service members from the military, his team said Monday — denying a report that claimed he plans to do so as soon as he returns to the White House.

Speculation about the possible ban started swirling when the UK outlet the Times, citing US defense sources, reported earlier Monday that Trump was planning to execute the sweeping executive order to remove all active trans service personnel from their posts.

“These unnamed sources are speculating and have no idea what they are actually talking about,” Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told The Post.

Well, I hope it is true. Enough is enough. We have coddled these people quite enough.

I spoke recently in the US to a former officer who says he was forced into early retirement because he asked his superior what rights he had as a religious objector to the trans phenomenon to refuse to participate in the push to normalize transgenderism in the armed forces. According to this man, he was given a choice of leaving the military, or having his record stained by some sort of demerit that the superior officer planned to put into his record, merely for asking.

If this is true, then for all its claims of “inclusivity,” the US military would rather have transgendered troops than Christians and others who object to them. This is a choice that the woke brass have made. In the Times account, unnamed Pentagon sources complained to the newspaper that a Trump move to discharge the trans troops would hurt readiness at a time when the Marine Corps is the only branch of the armed services that is meeting its recruitment goals.

There have been many anecdotal reports that wokeness is one significant obstacle to recruitment, though Pentagon officials keep denying it. I can tell you that over the past few years, I have personally heard from a number of people, both active duty service members and veterans, who have said exactly that. One man I know said that he is the fifth generation of his family to serve in the military, “but it ends with me.” Seeing how politicized the military has become, with DEI and trans, he advised his children not to seek to serve.

An active-duty lower-level officer I spoke to earlier this fall told me that it is well known within the armed services that if you object in any way, on any grounds at all, to DEI and trans, it is a death sentence for your career. He explained to me how these programs are harming morale and hurting readiness, because service members are being promoted on the basis of “social justice,” not competence and ability.

Another officer who recently left the military spoke to me at a recent post-election event in the US, and begged me to tell J.D. Vance that the only way to save the military is for President Trump to fire every three-star and four-star general now serving. All of them, he said, advanced under the woke regime instituted by Barack Obama — a regime that went largely unchallenged by the first Trump administration, and accelerated under Joe Biden.

Law professor Lesley Wexler, who is pro-LGBT in the military, examined yesterday the grounds for transgender ban in the military:

The Trump administration seems likely to reinstate the transgender service ban affecting between 10,000-15,000 serving troops plus potential recruits. Nominee Pete Hegseth has argued that transgender service personnel cannot be integrated into troops because “being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences.” He contends that racial integration succeeded because men of different races can perform the same, but ostensibly trans-individuals (and women, discussed below) cannot. What complications and differences might those be?

1. Health Care

Trump’s first administration referenced health care costs as a reason for the ban. Those health-care costs could include gender-affirming care such as surgeries, psychotherapy, and other treatments. That cost, approximately 3 million a year under the Biden administration, is a pittance of the Pentagon’s overall health care budget of over 35 billion and a magnitude of order less than the Pentagon’s spending on Viagra. A variant on this argument is that trans individuals join the military only for gender-affirming care and will leave shortly after receiving operations, thus affecting unit cohesion and readiness. After a quick search, I have not been able to find any empirical data from the Biden administration substantiating this claim but am open to the possibility that such data does in fact exist.

A second set of health-care objections relates to the belief that trans individuals are psychologically unstable. Hegseth has argued that trans-inclusionary policies “distract from the military’s core mission, citing what he calls ‘trans’ lunacy’” and that trans-individuals themselves are a distraction. These types of arguments are similar to the conclusion of Secretary Mattis’ 2018 memo to President Trump concluding:

[T]here are substantial risks associated with allowing the accession and retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria and require, or have already undertaken, a course of treatment to change their gender. Furthermore, the Department also finds that exempting such persons from well-established mental health, physical health, and sex-based standards, which apply to all Service members, including transgender Service members without gender dysphoria, could undermine readiness, disrupt unit cohesion, and impose an unreasonable burden on the military that is not conducive to military effectiveness and lethality.

2. Fitness tests

Trans individuals present some distinctive issues when it comes to fitness testing. The DoD currently applies the fitness standards that match the individual’s gender marker in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System. Individuals may also seek exceptions to that determination—so for instance, a trans man could request to use female fitness standards rather than male fitness standards. Relatedly, but distinctly, transgender individuals may also seek and receive fitness exemptions while on hormone therapy.

In the status quo, at least some branches provide a gender-normed test instead of a gender-neutral test to determine individuals’ physical fitness. Trump and Hegseth might object to a trans woman taking the women’s test rather than the man’s test, though I suspect they would have no objection to a trans man taking the man’s test. Under this objection, it is an unfair advantage to allow only trans women to take the “easier” gender normed test as opposed to also allowing men to take it. Or to put it differently, it would decrease combat readiness to have troops take a test not matched to their biology or to take no test at all.

3. Barracks and bathrooms

Current regulations allow that soldiers who are “stable in their self-identified gender,” can request to change their gender marker in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting system. Once granted, that means the soldier will have access to their newly recognized gender-specific facilities such as bathrooms and showers. I allow the possibility that this is causing on-the-ground problems and comment boards certainly register a host of objections.

Seems to me that whatever you think of transgenderism, you’d have to be blinded by ideology not to see how disruptive normalizing trans in active-duty service members is. It is plain common sense to see, as Gen. Mattis did, that trans in the military imposes “an unreasonable burden on the military that is not conducive to military effectiveness and lethality.”

We know from the comments from the incoming president’s press secretary that Trump is at least considering ending the careers of trans service members, even though no decision has been made. The fact that the woke Pentagon is leaking to the media shows just how entrenched the woke are in the military bureaucracy, and the kind of fight the new president faces.

Even though the media are going to try to crucify Trump for it, it’s a fight worth having. If we don’t fix this now, we’re sunk. The purpose of a military is to fight and kill to defend the country and to achieve a nation’s aims. It is not to be a vast laboratory for social engineering. A nation that doesn’t understand that, and act on that understanding, deserves the defeats it is surely courting.

DEI Increases Hatred — Report

Here is a link to a blockbuster new academic study by the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab, that finds DEI instruction actually increases hatred and suspicion across racial and other lines. Here’s what the researchers set out to find:

Researchers presented their subjects with Kendi and DiAngelo essays arguing for these themes:

White supremacy and racism are a systemic and nearly universal norm, mindset, or worldview.

Normal institutions and Western ideologies are secretly enforcing racist agendas and White people are beneficiaries and entitled to the benefits of systemic white supremacy and racism.

The universality of white supremacy agonizes people of color by virtue of endless hostile encounters.

Western countries are compromised by virtue of their racist ideology and past.

Anti-racist discrimination is the only solution to racist discrimination.

You can learn their top-line findings at this X thread by Crémieux. I don’t have the space in today’s newsletter to list them all, but the bottom line is that researchers found that after reading Kendi and DiAngelo, subjects were both more likely to perceive bigotry than before, and more willing to punish those they assumed were guilty of this bias, even though the accused had done nothing wrong. More:

DEI, at the vanguard of the soft totalitarianism I write about in Live Not By Lies, teaches people to hate each other. It must go. Once again, even though it is going to be a long, rhetorically violent struggle, this is a fight worth having. DEI is destroying our society. It not only fails to improve things, it makes them far worse.