by William Skink
The title of this post is inaccurate. Mark Tokarski isn’t an apologist for pedophile priests because you can’t be an apologist for something you don’t think actually happened.
How does one arrive at such a mind-bending conclusion? By making thoughtful claims, like this:
Last night I picked up the iPad to read Miles Mathis’s latest paper concerning the movie Spotlight. I too have had the insight that if the mainstream press is behind exposure of a scandal, then something is rotten, and it is not Catholic priests. After all, we do not have real journalism in this country. Instead we have lightweights, actors, poseurs and outright fakes. Real research is done by blogs like this and so many others, and by people like Mathis.
The “article” this claim of fakery leans heavily on is an odd mix of jew-genealogy and a curious parsing of what actually constitutes pedophilia. Here is an example:
OK, I found enough data to make you very suspicious of this story. But what was it all about? Why fake a major story about pedophilia in the Catholic Church? Strap yourself down, because I still have a lot of things to hit, and many of them may not have occurred to you. Some may be difficult for us both. We will start with pedophilia itself. It is a word thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean? It means (sexual) love of children. Legally, a child is a person who has not gone through puberty, so we are talking about persons under 12-14, say. It varies, because not everyone goes through puberty at the same age. I mention this, because there is some confusion, and that confusion has been promoted on purpose.
What neither Tokarski, nor his go-to decoder ring, Miles Mathis, acknowledge is the fact there are thousands and thousands of real victims abused by predator priests who were systematically protected by the church.
Before I left my job at the shelter I had a brief conversation with a client who was expecting a small settlement from legal proceedings regarding abuse he experienced as a child by a priest. And during a vacation I took in Costa Rica, my wife and I nearly stayed at a hostel we later learned was being run by Catholic priest kicked out of the states. We were told this by the proprietor of the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at after leaving the hostel because my wife got a bad feeling about the place and didn’t want to stay there.
I am one person with two anecdotal stories. I don’t say that to prove anything other than backing up my audacious assertion that widespread sexual abuse happened, was systematically covered up, then eventually exposed.
Are there agendas behind how the sexual abuse scandals (plural) were exposed? Are intelligence agencies involved? It’s quite possible, but to simply dismiss the scandal as “fake” is utter bullshit and incredibly offensive to survivors.
Mark Tokarski makes a lot of bullshit claims about people, mostly celebrities, but still people. These claims are backed up by the kind of evidence that convicted witches in Salem (also a hoax, according to Master Mathis). I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t perhaps more to his years of antagonizing the MT blogosphere.
And I’m also beginning to wonder about Steve Tokarski:
It’s talked about in the church parking lot, after meetings and over coffee following Mass, but the pedophilia crisis has not yet been a topic in the pulpit of St. Pius X Catholic Church in Billings.
This will soon change, said the Rev. Steve Tokarski. “The heartache and dismay and sadness” caused by the crisis will not be healed through avoidance, he said.
“At some point I’m going to need to address it. People are disheartened, discouraged, scandalized. I think I have a responsibility to speak publicly in a weekend homily.”
Tokarski is not yet sure what he will say. He’s still trying to make sense of it himself. Nothing in his three decades of priesthood compares with the shadow cast by the scandal, he said.
“In the course of 34 years, it’s like going from the age of innocence to where we are now,” Tokarski said.