Tea at Trianon: Cleveland Priest Gets Life

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Cleveland Priest Gets Life

Lord, have mercy on us. From Pillar Catholic:

Police searched McWilliams’ rectory on December 5, 2019. They found a hard drive, memory stick, and laptop containing thousands of images and videos of child pornography, most of them far too graphic, and upsetting, to describe. The priest was arrested the next day, and charged with possession of child pornography. In the days and weeks that followed, police analyzed his computers and hard drives, his dropbox accounts, his email addresses.
They found records of his texts with Joseph and at least one other boy whom he blackmailed on social media. They found indecent images and videos of those boys, and indecent images of a teenage girl he had used to deceive them. They continued to find more child pornography, some of which graphically depicted children being sexually abused.
Police also found that McWilliams had used a location-based hookup app, Grindr, to meet two boys, 15 and 16, whom he paid for numerous sexual liaisons in nearby hotels. It is not clear when McWilliams started using Grindr to meet teenagers for sex. But it seemed to continue after the Christophers had gone to the police; investigators found hotel receipts from as recently as October 2019.
While county and state prosecutors had initially planned to charge him, McWilliams was charged with federal crimes in February 2020. Covid hit. Courts slowed down. But in July 2020, McWilliams was indicted on eight federal charges: two counts of sex trafficking minors, three counts of sexually exploiting minors, one count of transporting child pornography, one count of distributing child pornography, and one count of possessing child pornography.
Through his attorney, McWilliams declined The Pillar’s interview request. (Read more.)

Is there a crisis of morale in the priesthood? HERE.

Another terrible case, HERE.

God save us.