I commented this earlier, and will put it here as well: The prayers of the Auxilium Christianorum (which is a daily prayer regimen) are made to help our exorcists combat demonic wrath. The opening prayers to The Virgin Mary asks for aid in blinding evil from seeing our good works and protecting those who are working hard against demonic forces.
“…Blind them so that they know not on who to take vengeance…”
I hope Fr. Martins gets justice. Thank you for reporting on this Rod!
The latest update from The Pillar seems to indicate there's still more information to come out. At this point, they aren't retracting anything they said.
The update speaks of a "boundary violation." Someone posted to the comment section at The Pillar listed the diocesan policy in that regard and linked a 13-page policy statement on appropriate acts while working with children, including "bounds":
"The Diocese of Juliet's own Safe Environment standards specifically allow for the following types of physical contact. It's perfectly reasonable to expect priests and all others working in the church to stay within these bounds:
• Side hugs • Shoulder to shoulder hugs • Pats on the upper back • Handshakes • “High-fives” and hand slapping • Arms around shoulders • Holding hands while walking with small children • Sitting beside small children • Kneeling or bending to receive hugs from small children • Holding hands during prayer • Pats on the head when culturally appropriate • Reciprocation of appropriate gestures initiated by a minor or vulnerable adult"
The actions described in the attorney's letter sound entirely legal and harmless. They also sound a little stupid, as is often the case in controversies like this. He really didn't need to get into "Did you ever floss your teeth with your hair?" If nothing else had happened, no complaint, no investigation, he might have felt a little sheepish afterward about saying that. Most of us would find lifting a strand of a person's hair to also be harmless, although technically any physical contact with a person can be construed as battery. Clearly every hug, every handshake, is not battery, and to demand evidence of consent is beyond reason.
Maybe there is more to this than appears in the letter. I rather doubt it -- but lawyers are trained to lay out the facts most helpful to their client in the most strident terms, while leaving out any facts that are not so helpful, even if they are not downright criminal. An investigation does not mean Father Martin did anything wrong, a letter from a lawyer is not exoneration.
The fact that police found no violation the first time is significant.
I doubt very much that Father Martin has any legal basis to sue for libel. If the paper said "there is reason to believe a child was sexually abused" that would be a basis to sue. Reporting that there is an investigation and that allegations were made of whatever was alleged is not defamation. Possibly the angry father could be sued, but not the paper who reported that the angry father said what he said and the police investigated. But it depends on what the paper actually printed.
As to the diocese... I can hardly blame them for playing safe. After decades of extensive negative publicity about clerical abuse of horrific proportions and church authorities turning a blind eye, transferring perpetrators to repeat their crimes... a common antidote, probably with advice of legal counsel, is to always over-react. Take no chances. Shut down anything taking place on church premises or with church sponsorship or invitation that might in any way be compromising or later appear to have aided abetted anything alleged to have happened. They can always issue a press release later saying "We are happy to report that Father Martin had been fully exonerated by the police investigation, but where the safety of children in our parish is concerned, we acted with an abundance of caution...
Its unfortunate that this is the safe course, and it is all the more important not to interpret acting with an abundance of caution as evidence of guilt.
I don’t have a horse in this particular race, but, it absolutely galls me the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ attitude.
There’s no real ‘right way’ of handling situations like this, but, there are ways of handling it that show maturity and discernment of both parties. And this is not it. The father in question made some dangerous assumptions and it seems to me, none of the adults acted with discernment…simply lawfare.
But clickbait outrage is default now…perhaps Dad was looking forward to the talk show circuit. I doubt it, but, one wonders.
I’m sure Fr. Martin will come out better for this, but, the whole thing leaves a bad taste of all parties involved.
Personally, I think that Roman priests as a class have forfeited the presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion, for reasons that don't really need explaining at this point—nothing personal against any given priest. If I hear an allegation against a Roman priest, I'm probably gonna assume it's true unless confirmed otherwise.
There have been plenty of plausible allegations against priests in at least of one of the Eastern Catholic jurisdictions in the United States over the past 25 years.
Sure, as in any place where one encounters concentrations of power. But I reckon that they "as a class" haven't forefeited the presumption of innocence, whereas the systemic rot in Rome is enough to shift that standard.
I said in the court of public opinion, or as a heuristic for navigating the world. You know, sort of like saying don't go to places where a lot of young Black men are gathered and excited: a healthy prejudice.
>> but, it absolutely galls me the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ attitude.
I'm going through hard times right now, so I'm doing rideshare gig-work. Four weeks ago a customer/rider made the complaint to Lyft that I, Daniel Heneghan, was not the driver she encountered in the car when I picked her up. She clamed that I, Daniel Heneghan, was not Daniel Heneghan, that some other imposter was driving the car. I assured her that I am me. I am me, me, mine. I look a little different from the photo on the rider app (lost 50 lbs and grew my hair out), but I am i, me, me, mine. No matter. She made a complaint to Lyft. GUILTY!!!. They fired/deactivated me, furthermore, making the accusation that I, Daniel Heneghan, was leasing out my pitiable care and Lyft account to some joker on the street. Guilty, and now way to defend my innocence because this was all done through email/msg. No human contact.
I hate the snitch economy/society. America is a rotten place.
I’m sorry that happened. We’ve been there having to do the side -gigs and it’s enormously stressful! I’m usually a person who will go out of her way to not cause trouble for someone else, the entitlement of people boggles my mind.
Did you consider sending in your old picture and your current picture by email? Even if they look somewhat different, a close examination, which your passenger did not do, would show they are the same.
A sent a letter, explaining the circumstances, by UPS to David Risher, the CEO of Lyft. Crickets. Will send another letter to head of HR and one to legal.
Very much an overreaction. But also very poor judgement on Fr. Martin’s part. You can no longer touch a child; especially if you’re a R.C. priest. The tragic result of a terrible history that is all too recent.
I find it pretty despicable to send out a letter like this as an attempt to attack the press. The Pillar's article reported something that was already public, and was very careful to stick strictly to the facts, without rushing to judgment. I sympathize with Fr. Martins; there are obviously a lot of people who are going to assume the worst about any priest with any accusation. But as someone who has been teaching in Catholic schools for over a decade, I know better than to go touching the hair of children I don't even know. I certainly hope there is nothing more to the story than an overreacting parent (I've dealt with a few of those over the years). But even if Fr. Martins did absolutely nothing wrong in any of his interactions with children, I don't care for his lawyer's letter.
I don’t know that I would describe the letter as despicable. A priest suspected or accused of any kind of misconduct will almost immediately be assumed to be guilty of some sort of sexual crime against minors; that default assumption isn’t something for which the Pillar writers are responsible, of course. But it does mean that the attorneys of an accused priest might have to bark very loudly to dispel that assumption and protect their client’s reputation (to which he is entitled under canon law. A polite request or a suggestion might not be forceful enough. Furthermore, in this particular case, even the diocese’s initial statement held that everyone involved in the incident was “safe”, which to my mind would militate against any kind of sexual abuse or assault. That’s not the impression I got from the initial article at all until a few paragraphs further into, after we were already told that the incident involved “alleged inappropriate conduct towards children.” Finally, I don’t think it would’ve killed the Pillar to wait to hit Publish until facts were a little thicker on the ground. It’s sort of like a scene in Frasier, where Daphne is reminiscing about a UK newspaper headline: “British Politician Seen in Woman’s Clothing”- “But by the time you found out it was Margaret Thatcher, you’d already bought the paper.”
An update: if neither the diocese nor the priest responded to requests for comment by The Pillar before publication, then that puts the publication in a better light, morally and maybe legally (again, don't trust legal advice from a journalist who only has one undergraduate media law class behind him). I have personal experience on how a bad actor in the Church used hiding from a reporter to try to prevent publication of a story unfavorable to him.
Back in 2002, when I was at National Review, a Dallas Morning News journalist reached out to me to see if I could convince Fr Benedict Groeschel to talk to him. I told him I didn't know the man. The reporter said he was working on a story about (if memory serves) how Fr Groeschel's treatment program recycled accused abusers who went on to re-offend. He didn't want to publish without talking to Fr Groeschel, who refused to take his many calls. Eventually he did publish, and noted in the article that he had tried repeatedly to reach Fr Groeschel.
After the story appeared, Fr Groeschel whined to everyone that the journalist had never sought his side of the story. It was a straight-up lie. I can only assume that Groeschel thought that by avoiding the journalist, he could stop the story.
Let me be clear: I am NOT saying that this was what either Father Martins or the Diocese did! I don't know. I can imagine it is very hard to reach Father Martins if one doesn't have his phone number, but the Diocese does have a communications staff. I am just offering this comment to let you know why journalists might be willing to go with a story based only on an official press release from a diocese, even if they don't have other reporting. It is assumed within the business that a press release from a government official or other official source (like a diocese) is sufficient to warrant a news story.
Agreed. It is quite possible that the format of a letter making demands on the publication is intended primarily to publicize the priest's side of the story, without any real expectation that a lawsuit could be filed and won. There is no obligation to sue merely because a demand letter has been sent.
Good grief, didn't Father Martin know he is very much in Satan's cross-hairs, and that the devil was intently watching for the slightest misstep he could use to destroy him? So just put "priest", " touch", and "child" in the same sentence and the devil was off to the races. And it didn't take much to incite the father, as most parents understandably don't want priests touching their kids unless it's to pull them out of a burning building. Fr. Martin picked a fight with a very clever adversary, and now he needs to stay on his toes if he wishes to survive.
Never attribute to the Devil that which is adequately explained by secular paranoia against Catholic clergy. The Devil’s only act was to grab the popcorn.
Hindsight's 20/20 and all that. Right now, as I sit here watching my 5-month-old kitten and hoping she makes it all right until we get to the vet tomorrow morning, I'm second-guessing whether I gave her too much of the new kibble I'm transitioning her to. I'm an experienced "cat lady" whose been nurturing this kitten ("Niblet") since she was 2 weeks and 4 days old, with several trips to the vet already for tummy issues related to her not having had her mum's milk long enough. I'm thinking I should have been more careful, as I should have foreseen the consequences of getting the new-kibble-to-old-kibble ratio even just slightly wrong. It's puzzling why I didn't. Maybe I got a little arrogant because she'd been doing so well lately.
I'm having a bit of fun with y' all, but we can't have eyes in the backs of our heads and crystal balls on hand 24-7-365. Sometimes we just act like the awkward humans we are, and then someone comes along and gets offended and something we thought was perfectly innocent blows up into this huge drama <BANG!> just like that. I don't know, though, maybe that only happens to me?
I'm not passing any judgment on what happened. I wasn't there and, as an attorney I once worked with used to say, there's three truths: your truth, my truth, and THE truth - which is usually somewhere in the middle of yours and mine.
We shouldn't beat ourselves up over our mistakes, but we can learn from them. I'm pretty confident Fr. Martins just inadvertently gave the devil an inch, and he took a mile. Fr. Martins will be a little smarter next time.
I know this is not the subject matter but considering this priest is an exorcist can anyone explain to me why do demons posses people? I know it happens but I have never understood why they do it. Why don’t they instead tempt those people and lead them to hell and have them for eternity? By possessing them they are lessening their culpability. It seems to be an unforced error.
What you wrote could be boiled down to - why does God permit evil to exist? It is a great question. However I was simply asking about the logic and motivations of demons - why would demons want to possess people?
Permitting evil to exist is not the same thing as creating demons. Clearly this creation is some kind of experiment in which creatures have free will. That's not the same as creating beings who are affirmatively evil by their very nature and inflicting them upon people who have some good in them.
There is the Problem of Evil -- bad people doing bad things. Typically, “free will” is the response. Then there is “natural evil” -- floods, hurricanes, pediatric cancer. That’s a harder one. To this we add “supernatural evil” -- evil done by supernatural beings. I’d say this makes the classic problem of evil even worse. A god who has the three omnis chooses to allow humans to be tortured by invisible supernatural beings. To me, the only logical answers are either that God isn’t that powerful, or he’s a sadist who enjoys tormenting people.
Or that demons don’t exist at all, and “demonic possession” is just mental illness. Or hoaxes.
More generally, I think pediatric cancer is a devastating argument against any sort of benevolent and powerful monotheistic deity. It’s not an argument against a capricious or indifferent deity, and it’s not an argument against a sort of animist world view with competing supernatural beings that have to be placated. Which isn’t that far from Rod -- for all his talk of the vital necessity of Christianity, he’s very comfortable with a primitive religious outlook filled with spirits and hexes and wood nymphs and leprechauns.
God did not create the demons as demons any more than he created humankind with Stalin and Hitler as his desired ends. The demons were angels who fell of their own free will.
Much of this is mystery and will remain so while we are on this side of existence. The world, the universe was not created that way. But was cursed by sin, which came into existence by the exercise of free will against the will of God. Ever since, a barrier has existed between here and the hereafter that did not exist after God set things up. And before Man's rebellion, there was that of some of the hosts of Heaven. God did not create demons. Demons, spiritual beings, brought themselves into existence. Some say demons are the fallen angels who rebelled. Some scholars say they are not, rather, they are the souls of the Nephilum who perished in the Great Flood (Michael Heiser was one who has posited this theory.) Angels have the same free will humans do, but many aspects about their existence are different from ours. First, some of their traits they have are because of the proximity in which they live to God. They remove themselves from that proximity, they lose those traits (traits like love, creativity, things from God.) In fact, it is said that because humans possess traits like that independent of God, it is part of why the Fallen became resentful of both God and humanity and fell.
Why do they have possession, the unclean spirits? All possession is, is being able to override your will and control your faculties. And they cannot just do that at will, as they cannot do any number of actions without permissions being granted. You have to open the way for them to take possession. And it is through sinful means such gateways are created.
Which is again, why sin in emphasized, the damage it creates for a soul, the evil that is allowed to flourish and the further barrier between you and a Holy God.
Contrary to what others have said about Fr Martins' work, your question is exactly why his podcast and book are valuable. He is qualified to answer that question with his podcast and book. I am not, so I won't attempt an answer to your valid question.
Fr Martins repeatedly stresses to be cautious about being too interested in demons and definitely don't try any Do It Yourself approaches. Yet, it's very valuable to understand the many ways people can unknowingly give demons permission to adversely impact them.
Sigh. So much stupid between all parties involved, assuming that what is now being reported through Father Martin's shysters is accurate.
The father's overreaction is completely ridiculous and, having been in their shoes on many occasions, I have the most sympathy for the police officers having to deal with this idiocy.
That said, you don't f*cking touch other people's kids in 2024 unless it's some kind of an emergency. You just don't do it.
Not only that, you don't single out an individual kid, especially girls, for multiple rounds of interaction as seems to have been the case here. It is unclear how old the girl in question is, but the older she was, the more awkward and embarrassing she probably felt.
I'll go ahead and go there: the celibacy requirement is part of the problem here. A normal man with a wife and daughters of his own would "get" how the prolonged interaction with a strange female child could cause her discomfort. That's not to say that normal men aren't capable of making women uncomfortable, but as a husband and, particularly, a father, your understanding of how situations can upset the women in your care is exponentially greater than that of someone whose opportunity to learn those lessons is foreclosed by the demands of his vocation.
I've never understood the requirement of celibacy for Catholic priests, but I'm not Catholic so that's hardly surprising. Still, Paul said, "IF you can, you should remain celibate like me," very loosely paraphrased, of course.
A good Catholic priest of excellent character in my area went through something sort of similar. He’s youngish but traditional-minded about Church teachings. After he sounded a no-nonsense warning in addressing teenagers about what constitutes mortal sexual sin, at least one parent cried foul with feverish anger and unfounded insinuation. The parent was clearly leveraging the cultural momentum to suspect all Catholic priests of sexual sickness if they say anything about human sexuality at all. Even if all they’re doing is explaining the Church’s teachings on such matters.
Sure enough and soon enough, several other parents joined in the protest. The bishop suspended the priest from active ministry, investigated the complaints and found the priest had done nothing deserving of defrocking or anything even close to that. The bishop eventually reassigned this priest to another parish, using full transparency with the people of the second parish and, if I recall correctly, with the whole diocese via a news item in the diocesan newspaper.
Today that very good man and solidly small-o orthodox priest—a frankly great guy of normal, relatable masculinity—is back in ministry elsewhere in the diocese. So where does he go to get his reputation back?
Anyway, in my opinion, that priest’s absence from his first parish has been a real loss to that parish. It’s terrible to think how much dark power there can be in a parent’s overreaction given the current climate.
This does not sound criminal. But it’s still a weird and kind of creepy thing to do --singling out a particular girl, drawing attention to her lengthy locks, talking about flossing teeth with them, which is a truly bizarre idea, and then actually touching her. It reminds me of the Biden hair-smelling. Does anyone doubt that Biden is acting out some weird fetish in a deniable way? Does this priest do this routinely? Has he singled out more than one girl and discussed hair-flossing and touched her? The father may have overreacted, but at least he didn’t punch the hair-flosser in the face, which would be a pretty normal reaction.
If it is okay for President Biden to smell the hair of various girls then it is okay for Father Carlos Martins to touch it. On the other hand if he started to floss his teeth with her hair then we would have a real problem.
I’m not a Biden fan, but I never saw what he’d done wrong in that respect.
On the other hand, the conversation about flossing sounds bizarre, even if not sexual. At middle school, one of our teachers was obsessed with blond girls, and used to keep asking them whether it was natural, making jokes about peroxide and so on. It was never sexual, but felt off.
Then you never took the trouble to look. Biden is on video in a number of circumstances, touching children’s bodies in various ways, and whispering to them. This isn’t difficult to access for even the most tech-ignorant person.
Do just a bit of investigation.
It’s hard to believe that anyone could write what you wrote. And yet, here we are.
I commented this earlier, and will put it here as well: The prayers of the Auxilium Christianorum (which is a daily prayer regimen) are made to help our exorcists combat demonic wrath. The opening prayers to The Virgin Mary asks for aid in blinding evil from seeing our good works and protecting those who are working hard against demonic forces.
“…Blind them so that they know not on who to take vengeance…”
I hope Fr. Martins gets justice. Thank you for reporting on this Rod!
The latest update from The Pillar seems to indicate there's still more information to come out. At this point, they aren't retracting anything they said.
If you're not already praying for our priests, please consider adopting a priest. https://opusangelorum.org/pray-for-priests-how/
The update speaks of a "boundary violation." Someone posted to the comment section at The Pillar listed the diocesan policy in that regard and linked a 13-page policy statement on appropriate acts while working with children, including "bounds":
"The Diocese of Juliet's own Safe Environment standards specifically allow for the following types of physical contact. It's perfectly reasonable to expect priests and all others working in the church to stay within these bounds:
• Side hugs • Shoulder to shoulder hugs • Pats on the upper back • Handshakes • “High-fives” and hand slapping • Arms around shoulders • Holding hands while walking with small children • Sitting beside small children • Kneeling or bending to receive hugs from small children • Holding hands during prayer • Pats on the head when culturally appropriate • Reciprocation of appropriate gestures initiated by a minor or vulnerable adult"
The actions described in the attorney's letter sound entirely legal and harmless. They also sound a little stupid, as is often the case in controversies like this. He really didn't need to get into "Did you ever floss your teeth with your hair?" If nothing else had happened, no complaint, no investigation, he might have felt a little sheepish afterward about saying that. Most of us would find lifting a strand of a person's hair to also be harmless, although technically any physical contact with a person can be construed as battery. Clearly every hug, every handshake, is not battery, and to demand evidence of consent is beyond reason.
Maybe there is more to this than appears in the letter. I rather doubt it -- but lawyers are trained to lay out the facts most helpful to their client in the most strident terms, while leaving out any facts that are not so helpful, even if they are not downright criminal. An investigation does not mean Father Martin did anything wrong, a letter from a lawyer is not exoneration.
The fact that police found no violation the first time is significant.
I doubt very much that Father Martin has any legal basis to sue for libel. If the paper said "there is reason to believe a child was sexually abused" that would be a basis to sue. Reporting that there is an investigation and that allegations were made of whatever was alleged is not defamation. Possibly the angry father could be sued, but not the paper who reported that the angry father said what he said and the police investigated. But it depends on what the paper actually printed.
As to the diocese... I can hardly blame them for playing safe. After decades of extensive negative publicity about clerical abuse of horrific proportions and church authorities turning a blind eye, transferring perpetrators to repeat their crimes... a common antidote, probably with advice of legal counsel, is to always over-react. Take no chances. Shut down anything taking place on church premises or with church sponsorship or invitation that might in any way be compromising or later appear to have aided abetted anything alleged to have happened. They can always issue a press release later saying "We are happy to report that Father Martin had been fully exonerated by the police investigation, but where the safety of children in our parish is concerned, we acted with an abundance of caution...
Its unfortunate that this is the safe course, and it is all the more important not to interpret acting with an abundance of caution as evidence of guilt.
I don’t have a horse in this particular race, but, it absolutely galls me the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ attitude.
There’s no real ‘right way’ of handling situations like this, but, there are ways of handling it that show maturity and discernment of both parties. And this is not it. The father in question made some dangerous assumptions and it seems to me, none of the adults acted with discernment…simply lawfare.
But clickbait outrage is default now…perhaps Dad was looking forward to the talk show circuit. I doubt it, but, one wonders.
I’m sure Fr. Martin will come out better for this, but, the whole thing leaves a bad taste of all parties involved.
Personally, I think that Roman priests as a class have forfeited the presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion, for reasons that don't really need explaining at this point—nothing personal against any given priest. If I hear an allegation against a Roman priest, I'm probably gonna assume it's true unless confirmed otherwise.
There have been plenty of plausible allegations against priests in at least of one of the Eastern Catholic jurisdictions in the United States over the past 25 years.
Sure, as in any place where one encounters concentrations of power. But I reckon that they "as a class" haven't forefeited the presumption of innocence, whereas the systemic rot in Rome is enough to shift that standard.
Not even ten righteous ones there?
I said in the court of public opinion, or as a heuristic for navigating the world. You know, sort of like saying don't go to places where a lot of young Black men are gathered and excited: a healthy prejudice.
Fair enough.
I’d say fair enough, but, I don’t have enough experience. I suppose I’m inclined to my more trusting nature. Probably to my detriment.
>> but, it absolutely galls me the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ attitude.
I'm going through hard times right now, so I'm doing rideshare gig-work. Four weeks ago a customer/rider made the complaint to Lyft that I, Daniel Heneghan, was not the driver she encountered in the car when I picked her up. She clamed that I, Daniel Heneghan, was not Daniel Heneghan, that some other imposter was driving the car. I assured her that I am me. I am me, me, mine. I look a little different from the photo on the rider app (lost 50 lbs and grew my hair out), but I am i, me, me, mine. No matter. She made a complaint to Lyft. GUILTY!!!. They fired/deactivated me, furthermore, making the accusation that I, Daniel Heneghan, was leasing out my pitiable care and Lyft account to some joker on the street. Guilty, and now way to defend my innocence because this was all done through email/msg. No human contact.
I hate the snitch economy/society. America is a rotten place.
I’m sorry that happened. We’ve been there having to do the side -gigs and it’s enormously stressful! I’m usually a person who will go out of her way to not cause trouble for someone else, the entitlement of people boggles my mind.
That's terrible!
Did you consider sending in your old picture and your current picture by email? Even if they look somewhat different, a close examination, which your passenger did not do, would show they are the same.
A sent a letter, explaining the circumstances, by UPS to David Risher, the CEO of Lyft. Crickets. Will send another letter to head of HR and one to legal.
Very much an overreaction. But also very poor judgement on Fr. Martin’s part. You can no longer touch a child; especially if you’re a R.C. priest. The tragic result of a terrible history that is all too recent.
I find it pretty despicable to send out a letter like this as an attempt to attack the press. The Pillar's article reported something that was already public, and was very careful to stick strictly to the facts, without rushing to judgment. I sympathize with Fr. Martins; there are obviously a lot of people who are going to assume the worst about any priest with any accusation. But as someone who has been teaching in Catholic schools for over a decade, I know better than to go touching the hair of children I don't even know. I certainly hope there is nothing more to the story than an overreacting parent (I've dealt with a few of those over the years). But even if Fr. Martins did absolutely nothing wrong in any of his interactions with children, I don't care for his lawyer's letter.
I don’t know that I would describe the letter as despicable. A priest suspected or accused of any kind of misconduct will almost immediately be assumed to be guilty of some sort of sexual crime against minors; that default assumption isn’t something for which the Pillar writers are responsible, of course. But it does mean that the attorneys of an accused priest might have to bark very loudly to dispel that assumption and protect their client’s reputation (to which he is entitled under canon law. A polite request or a suggestion might not be forceful enough. Furthermore, in this particular case, even the diocese’s initial statement held that everyone involved in the incident was “safe”, which to my mind would militate against any kind of sexual abuse or assault. That’s not the impression I got from the initial article at all until a few paragraphs further into, after we were already told that the incident involved “alleged inappropriate conduct towards children.” Finally, I don’t think it would’ve killed the Pillar to wait to hit Publish until facts were a little thicker on the ground. It’s sort of like a scene in Frasier, where Daphne is reminiscing about a UK newspaper headline: “British Politician Seen in Woman’s Clothing”- “But by the time you found out it was Margaret Thatcher, you’d already bought the paper.”
An update: if neither the diocese nor the priest responded to requests for comment by The Pillar before publication, then that puts the publication in a better light, morally and maybe legally (again, don't trust legal advice from a journalist who only has one undergraduate media law class behind him). I have personal experience on how a bad actor in the Church used hiding from a reporter to try to prevent publication of a story unfavorable to him.
Back in 2002, when I was at National Review, a Dallas Morning News journalist reached out to me to see if I could convince Fr Benedict Groeschel to talk to him. I told him I didn't know the man. The reporter said he was working on a story about (if memory serves) how Fr Groeschel's treatment program recycled accused abusers who went on to re-offend. He didn't want to publish without talking to Fr Groeschel, who refused to take his many calls. Eventually he did publish, and noted in the article that he had tried repeatedly to reach Fr Groeschel.
After the story appeared, Fr Groeschel whined to everyone that the journalist had never sought his side of the story. It was a straight-up lie. I can only assume that Groeschel thought that by avoiding the journalist, he could stop the story.
Let me be clear: I am NOT saying that this was what either Father Martins or the Diocese did! I don't know. I can imagine it is very hard to reach Father Martins if one doesn't have his phone number, but the Diocese does have a communications staff. I am just offering this comment to let you know why journalists might be willing to go with a story based only on an official press release from a diocese, even if they don't have other reporting. It is assumed within the business that a press release from a government official or other official source (like a diocese) is sufficient to warrant a news story.
Defamation - not easy to prove. Out of curiosity, I gave The Pillar article a look . I doubt you’d win at trial on a defamation claim here.
Agreed. It is quite possible that the format of a letter making demands on the publication is intended primarily to publicize the priest's side of the story, without any real expectation that a lawsuit could be filed and won. There is no obligation to sue merely because a demand letter has been sent.
Good grief, didn't Father Martin know he is very much in Satan's cross-hairs, and that the devil was intently watching for the slightest misstep he could use to destroy him? So just put "priest", " touch", and "child" in the same sentence and the devil was off to the races. And it didn't take much to incite the father, as most parents understandably don't want priests touching their kids unless it's to pull them out of a burning building. Fr. Martin picked a fight with a very clever adversary, and now he needs to stay on his toes if he wishes to survive.
I thought of that as well: it is puzzling why *an exorcist* wouldn't have foreseen the predictable consequences here.
Maybe he got a little cocky because he was on a winning streak.
Never attribute to the Devil that which is adequately explained by secular paranoia against Catholic clergy. The Devil’s only act was to grab the popcorn.
Hindsight's 20/20 and all that. Right now, as I sit here watching my 5-month-old kitten and hoping she makes it all right until we get to the vet tomorrow morning, I'm second-guessing whether I gave her too much of the new kibble I'm transitioning her to. I'm an experienced "cat lady" whose been nurturing this kitten ("Niblet") since she was 2 weeks and 4 days old, with several trips to the vet already for tummy issues related to her not having had her mum's milk long enough. I'm thinking I should have been more careful, as I should have foreseen the consequences of getting the new-kibble-to-old-kibble ratio even just slightly wrong. It's puzzling why I didn't. Maybe I got a little arrogant because she'd been doing so well lately.
I'm having a bit of fun with y' all, but we can't have eyes in the backs of our heads and crystal balls on hand 24-7-365. Sometimes we just act like the awkward humans we are, and then someone comes along and gets offended and something we thought was perfectly innocent blows up into this huge drama <BANG!> just like that. I don't know, though, maybe that only happens to me?
I'm not passing any judgment on what happened. I wasn't there and, as an attorney I once worked with used to say, there's three truths: your truth, my truth, and THE truth - which is usually somewhere in the middle of yours and mine.
We shouldn't beat ourselves up over our mistakes, but we can learn from them. I'm pretty confident Fr. Martins just inadvertently gave the devil an inch, and he took a mile. Fr. Martins will be a little smarter next time.
Yes, if nothing else, we humans are very good at providing the devil with opportunities!
Hoping this blows over quickly. So unfair to a wonderful priest who is doing such good work for Our Lord. Praying.
In America, defamation suits are difficult to win.
I know this is not the subject matter but considering this priest is an exorcist can anyone explain to me why do demons posses people? I know it happens but I have never understood why they do it. Why don’t they instead tempt those people and lead them to hell and have them for eternity? By possessing them they are lessening their culpability. It seems to be an unforced error.
Also explain why God would create demons who have the power to possess people. A loving God, no less.
What you wrote could be boiled down to - why does God permit evil to exist? It is a great question. However I was simply asking about the logic and motivations of demons - why would demons want to possess people?
Permitting evil to exist is not the same thing as creating demons. Clearly this creation is some kind of experiment in which creatures have free will. That's not the same as creating beings who are affirmatively evil by their very nature and inflicting them upon people who have some good in them.
There is the Problem of Evil -- bad people doing bad things. Typically, “free will” is the response. Then there is “natural evil” -- floods, hurricanes, pediatric cancer. That’s a harder one. To this we add “supernatural evil” -- evil done by supernatural beings. I’d say this makes the classic problem of evil even worse. A god who has the three omnis chooses to allow humans to be tortured by invisible supernatural beings. To me, the only logical answers are either that God isn’t that powerful, or he’s a sadist who enjoys tormenting people.
Or that demons don’t exist at all, and “demonic possession” is just mental illness. Or hoaxes.
More generally, I think pediatric cancer is a devastating argument against any sort of benevolent and powerful monotheistic deity. It’s not an argument against a capricious or indifferent deity, and it’s not an argument against a sort of animist world view with competing supernatural beings that have to be placated. Which isn’t that far from Rod -- for all his talk of the vital necessity of Christianity, he’s very comfortable with a primitive religious outlook filled with spirits and hexes and wood nymphs and leprechauns.
Re: To this we add “supernatural evil” -- evil done by supernatural beings.
To which the answer is also free will (on the part of those beings)
God did not create the demons as demons any more than he created humankind with Stalin and Hitler as his desired ends. The demons were angels who fell of their own free will.
Much of this is mystery and will remain so while we are on this side of existence. The world, the universe was not created that way. But was cursed by sin, which came into existence by the exercise of free will against the will of God. Ever since, a barrier has existed between here and the hereafter that did not exist after God set things up. And before Man's rebellion, there was that of some of the hosts of Heaven. God did not create demons. Demons, spiritual beings, brought themselves into existence. Some say demons are the fallen angels who rebelled. Some scholars say they are not, rather, they are the souls of the Nephilum who perished in the Great Flood (Michael Heiser was one who has posited this theory.) Angels have the same free will humans do, but many aspects about their existence are different from ours. First, some of their traits they have are because of the proximity in which they live to God. They remove themselves from that proximity, they lose those traits (traits like love, creativity, things from God.) In fact, it is said that because humans possess traits like that independent of God, it is part of why the Fallen became resentful of both God and humanity and fell.
Why do they have possession, the unclean spirits? All possession is, is being able to override your will and control your faculties. And they cannot just do that at will, as they cannot do any number of actions without permissions being granted. You have to open the way for them to take possession. And it is through sinful means such gateways are created.
Which is again, why sin in emphasized, the damage it creates for a soul, the evil that is allowed to flourish and the further barrier between you and a Holy God.
It's complicated. Why not read his book?
Contrary to what others have said about Fr Martins' work, your question is exactly why his podcast and book are valuable. He is qualified to answer that question with his podcast and book. I am not, so I won't attempt an answer to your valid question.
Fr Martins repeatedly stresses to be cautious about being too interested in demons and definitely don't try any Do It Yourself approaches. Yet, it's very valuable to understand the many ways people can unknowingly give demons permission to adversely impact them.
Sigh. So much stupid between all parties involved, assuming that what is now being reported through Father Martin's shysters is accurate.
The father's overreaction is completely ridiculous and, having been in their shoes on many occasions, I have the most sympathy for the police officers having to deal with this idiocy.
That said, you don't f*cking touch other people's kids in 2024 unless it's some kind of an emergency. You just don't do it.
Not only that, you don't single out an individual kid, especially girls, for multiple rounds of interaction as seems to have been the case here. It is unclear how old the girl in question is, but the older she was, the more awkward and embarrassing she probably felt.
I'll go ahead and go there: the celibacy requirement is part of the problem here. A normal man with a wife and daughters of his own would "get" how the prolonged interaction with a strange female child could cause her discomfort. That's not to say that normal men aren't capable of making women uncomfortable, but as a husband and, particularly, a father, your understanding of how situations can upset the women in your care is exponentially greater than that of someone whose opportunity to learn those lessons is foreclosed by the demands of his vocation.
Well said. An adult man should not touch any one, particularly girls......unless you're Joe Biden apparently.
The extended interaction with one girl compounded the mistake.
Re: .unless you're Joe Biden apparently.
Or George HW Bush. But to be fair, in past eras a certain amount of male touching was socially acceptable, or at least tolerated.
It would seem that "Don't you dare touch a hair on her head" has just taken a tragicomically literal turn.
Yes, in my opinion this celibacy requirement hasn't been helpful in the Catholic Church.
Excellent point.
I've never understood the requirement of celibacy for Catholic priests, but I'm not Catholic so that's hardly surprising. Still, Paul said, "IF you can, you should remain celibate like me," very loosely paraphrased, of course.
A good Catholic priest of excellent character in my area went through something sort of similar. He’s youngish but traditional-minded about Church teachings. After he sounded a no-nonsense warning in addressing teenagers about what constitutes mortal sexual sin, at least one parent cried foul with feverish anger and unfounded insinuation. The parent was clearly leveraging the cultural momentum to suspect all Catholic priests of sexual sickness if they say anything about human sexuality at all. Even if all they’re doing is explaining the Church’s teachings on such matters.
Sure enough and soon enough, several other parents joined in the protest. The bishop suspended the priest from active ministry, investigated the complaints and found the priest had done nothing deserving of defrocking or anything even close to that. The bishop eventually reassigned this priest to another parish, using full transparency with the people of the second parish and, if I recall correctly, with the whole diocese via a news item in the diocesan newspaper.
Today that very good man and solidly small-o orthodox priest—a frankly great guy of normal, relatable masculinity—is back in ministry elsewhere in the diocese. So where does he go to get his reputation back?
Anyway, in my opinion, that priest’s absence from his first parish has been a real loss to that parish. It’s terrible to think how much dark power there can be in a parent’s overreaction given the current climate.
This does not sound criminal. But it’s still a weird and kind of creepy thing to do --singling out a particular girl, drawing attention to her lengthy locks, talking about flossing teeth with them, which is a truly bizarre idea, and then actually touching her. It reminds me of the Biden hair-smelling. Does anyone doubt that Biden is acting out some weird fetish in a deniable way? Does this priest do this routinely? Has he singled out more than one girl and discussed hair-flossing and touched her? The father may have overreacted, but at least he didn’t punch the hair-flosser in the face, which would be a pretty normal reaction.
If it is okay for President Biden to smell the hair of various girls then it is okay for Father Carlos Martins to touch it. On the other hand if he started to floss his teeth with her hair then we would have a real problem.
I’m not a Biden fan, but I never saw what he’d done wrong in that respect.
On the other hand, the conversation about flossing sounds bizarre, even if not sexual. At middle school, one of our teachers was obsessed with blond girls, and used to keep asking them whether it was natural, making jokes about peroxide and so on. It was never sexual, but felt off.
Of course it was sexual.
Then you never took the trouble to look. Biden is on video in a number of circumstances, touching children’s bodies in various ways, and whispering to them. This isn’t difficult to access for even the most tech-ignorant person.
Do just a bit of investigation.
It’s hard to believe that anyone could write what you wrote. And yet, here we are.
That last line there is possibly the most reasonable thing I've ever heard you say.