imrandy's Blog

I'm so glad Bill Shiel and Fox 8 picked up the story about our Most Reverend Bishop Richard Lennon's unacceptable behavior when confronting Joe Cultrera for shooting footage outside a Boston-area church building where his brother was molested as a 12 year old. We need to run the bishop out of town. Cleveland is second in the nation (to Boston) in the number of sexual abuse allegations against the Catholic church, and I know this bully, Bishop Lennon, was assigned here, in part, to deal with these allegations. The other reason he is here is to close parishes that aren't pulling in the cash!

Lennon's inability to show any compassion with regard to abuse shows how hypocritical the Catholic church can be in their teachings. Catholics have poured money into the Cleveland Catholic Diocese only to discover many of their churches will be closing or diminished in the amount of services they provide. Furthermore, many Catholics are finding priests and pastors to be extremely nasty when confronted by concerns over abuses of power.

This organization is very powerful, but it should not be above the law. There doesn't seem to be any recourse for the shameful actions of priests. Bishop Lennon was simply behaving like a bully in the Frontline documentary, as were other priests, etc. What a contrast to the diminuitive Bishop Pilla, who fostered an environment of moving pedophile priests from parish to parish rather than confronting the situation and dealing with it from a legal aspect. It's likely he was under orders from the Vatican, and under the legal counsel of auxiliary Bishop Quinn, who advised that abuse-allegation files should be sent to the Consulate, where they cannot be subpoenaed by prosecutors. How convenient! If the church has nothing to hide, why move files around like they moved pedophile priests?! You can hide files, but you can't hide pedophiles, as the Catholic church is discovering!

It has become apparent that Richard Lennon is not the man to lead the Cleveland Catholic Diocese or any diocese. In fact, his behavior is not that of a man of God--it's more like that of the big, fat bully kids most of us couldn't stand in grade school. Hopefully, Cleveland Catholics will take up the cause of fighting for a better diocese. The Church owes it to them!