THE NEPHEW OF ULTRA LIBERAL AND NOW DECEASED AT 96 YEARS OLD ARCHBISHOP RAYMOND HUNTHAUSEN SAYS IN A PARAPHRASED WAY THAT POPE FRANCIS IS BRINGING BACK THE 1970'S SPIRIT OF VATICAN II THAT HIS UNCLE PROMOTED WITH A VENGEANCE

My comments first: Archbishop Hunthausen was the most liberal/progressive and heterodox bishop in the country when he served Seattle. Pope St. John Paul II, much to his credit, did the most he could do to reign him in and eventually Hunthausen resigned much earlier than the age of 75. He was 70.

Many won't remember this, but Bishop (at the time) Donald Wuerl was sent to Seattle by Pope John Paul II as Hunthausen's Co-Adjuator bishop, meaning he had the right to succeed Hunthausen whose days were numbered by Pope John Paul II. Wuerl was to clean up the mess there of a Catholic Church that had become heterodox and post-Catholic.

Bishop Wuerl was all but tarred and feathered by the liberal cabal there and more than likely orchestrated by Hunthausen. Wuerl did not have the chance to become the Archbishop of Seattle but was sent elsewhere by Pope John Paul II.

Part of the strategy of the Spirit of Vatican II was to hijack the Council and refashion it into some kind of Post-Catholic edifice. Much of what Hunthausen did 30 years ago is what Pope Francis is accomplishing by stealth today.

I believe too, that there is a correlation between the inclusive and more merciful Church that is a field hospital treating the injured and the sex abuse scandal that reached its climax in 1974. Homosexual priests who abused male children, teenagers and vulnerable adult men could be rescued by this mercy and field hospital Church and returned to ministry. Victimizing priests had more concern and empathy shown to them than their victims and worse yet, future potential victims.

But make no mistake, the majority of sexual abuse was against adolescent boys and adult men. But the homosexual lobby in the Church that developed in this Spirit of Vatican II Church would do anything to save their homosexual members and keep them in the Church to do as they pleased whether it was the abuse of boys, men, the stripping and constant decorating of churches and the abuse of dogma, doctrine and morality all the make way for a church that enables sinners and perverts to do as they wish and without guilt.

A guiltless Church was and is the goal, unless of course what is one of those rigid Catholics who today are described as gnostics and Pelagians. Everyone who is this way should feel guilty but not abusers or those who are social workers helping the poor and marginalized.

RAYMOND HUNTHAUSEN, 1921-2018

Former Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen dies

BY GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press

THOM BRIDGE Independent Record file

Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen’s legacy includes support for the needy, including the Hunthausen Fund in Helena at Good Samaritan Ministries and the Hunthausen Fund at St. James Cathedral in Seattle, which support the working poor and homeless.

SEATTLE

Retired Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen, whose outspoken support for nuclear disarmament, gay rights and an expanded role for women in the church made him one of the most controversial U.S. bishops, has died at 96.Hunthausen died Sunday at his home in Helena, Montana, the Seattle Archdiocese said .

Hunthausen, who was born in Montana, served as the bishop of Helena from 1962 to 1975 and as archbishop of Seattle from 1975 to 1991. He was the last living American bishop to have participated in all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council, called by the pope in the early 1960s to modernize the church, the archdiocese said.

“He was someone who through his example, a lot of people really saw that there was a place in the church for them,” his nephew, Denny Hunthausen, told The Seattle Times on Monday. “The messaging we’re seeing from Pope Francis now was something he was doing 20, 30 years ago: the message of love and mercy.”

Hunthausen led protests near a base for nuclear-armed Trident submarines at Bangor, Washington. He withheld half his federal income tax in the early 1980s in protest of nuclear weapon stockpiling and he urged others to do the same. The IRS garnished his wages.

Critics accused him of deviating from Catholic doctrine by allowing a group for gay Catholics to celebrate Mass at Seattle’s Saint James Cathedral; by allowing divorced or remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments; and by permitting Catholic hospitals to perform contraceptive sterilizations.

A Vatican investigation led to the appointment in 1985 of an auxiliary bishop who took over many administrative functions. Hunthausen’s authority was largely restored two years later.

The archdiocese said that under Hunthausen’s leadership, it became in 1988 one of the first dioceses in the nation to implement a policy to address child sexual abuse by priests and church employees.

Advocates for sex abuse victims say Hunthausen could have done more to protect young parishioners, but also credit him with being more proactive than his predecessors or other bishops around the country. The archdiocese has paid out tens of millions of dollars to child sex abuse victims, including in many cases that stemmed from Hunthausen’s tenure.

In 2009, Hunthausen became one of the highest ranking Catholic officials in the U.S. to testify at a sex-abuse trial, one that pertained to a priest who had been transferred from Spokane to Seattle for deviancy treatment. Hunthausen granted the priest, Patrick G. O’Donnell, full powers of ministry without the documentation usually required for transferred priests.

He testified that he was never informed why O’Donnell had been sent to Seattle.

“It was a breach on my part,” Hunthausen said. “It’s hard to acknowledge that now. It hurts me.”

Hunthausen also testified he made mistakes in his handling of one of the archdiocese’s worst predators, James McGreal, after learning of the abuse in the late 1970s. He reassigned McGreal to a parish where he would have access to children, against the recommendation of a psychologist who was treating him for pedophilia.

“I think Archbishop Hunthausen would have admitted that he could have done more to protect children in the Archdiocese, and to his credit he eventually admitted he had made some mistakes,” attorney Jason Amala, who has represented victims in dozens of cases stemming from Hunthausen’s tenure, wrote in an email. “He was the Seattle Archbishop when the Catholic Church finally started to address the problem of priests abusing children in the mid-to-late 1980s, and I think he tried to put the Seattle Archdiocese on a path to protecting kids and not covering-up for abusive priests.”

Hunthausen’s legacy also includes support for the needy, including the Hunthausen Fund in Helena at Good Samaritan Ministries and the Hunthausen Fund at St. James Cathedral in Seattle, which support the working poor and homeless.

In a statement, Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain called him a “humble and loving servant of the Lord, and a man of peace.”

Hunthausen retired in 1991 at age 70 and returned to Helena, where he sometimes helped at the diocese by celebrating Mass and hearing confessions. He spent the last years of his life living at a nursing facility with his brother, Jack Hunthausen, also a Catholic priest, and they celebrated Mass daily, the archdiocese said.

Memorial services are being planned in Helena and Seattle.