Apparently celibacy for priests is NBD

LINK

TL;DR - Priest fools around with HS senior. She complained decades later. Aymond continues to assign him after investigation finds priest violated celibacy vow.

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The chaplain at Brother Martin High School abruptly left his post earlier this month, just days after the school was notified of allegations that he kissed and fondled a Mt. Carmel Academy senior in 1990 while serving at another local Catholic institution, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Rev. Paul Hart was assigned by Archbishop Gregory Aymond to serve as Brother Martin’s chaplain in 2017, after a church investigation four years earlier confirmed the sexual misconduct but determined the student was not a minor under church law.

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quote:

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According to multiple sources, Brother Martin was unaware of the past abuse claims and was tipped off early this month.

Then, on Jan. 13, the archdiocese was formally asked to notify the school of the church investigation into claims Hart had engaged in sexual contact with a student. She was 17, and he was in his late 30s.

That investigation determined that Hart broke church laws mandating that priests practice celibacy. But the probe stopped short of finding that Hart had sexually abused a minor.

That's because church officials gave precedent to the canon law that was in place at the time of the alleged abuse, which considered 16 the age of majority, even though the U.S. Catholic Church had adopted policies in 2002 that instructed church leaders to consider anyone younger than 18 as underage, the sources said.

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So basically he fooled around with a HS senior who was a parishioner, but at the time she was not a "minor". it appears to have been consensual.

quote:

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When asked Monday about the investigation, the archdiocese declined to comment other than to say Hart retired on Jan. 6. The statement added that the archdiocese was barred from speaking about the case because of a federal court order, an apparent reference to a mandate associated with the church's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing from May 2020, when it was faced with dozens of pending abuse-related lawsuits.

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How are they still in bankruptcy? More and more I believe the bankruptcy was simply a way to avoid having to settle and talk about sexual issues.

quote:

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By 1990, he was allegedly spending his personal time with the student, and began kissing her, groping her chest, and at least once engaging in what church investigators described as “dry sex” — which involves people simulating intercourse with their clothes on — while in the rectory, the sources said.

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quote:

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The complaint led to an internal investigation that lasted into 2013. Generally, Hart denied initiating contact but acknowledged there was some and that he may have even "released some semen," multiple sources said.

Aymond's internal clerical advisors determined, at a minimum, Hart had violated celibacy rules along with priest-parishioner boundaries, the sources said. A separate review board advising Aymond, which included lay members of the church, voted that Hart — by his own admission — had abused a minor.

But the case turned on a technicality: the definition of an adult under church law at the time of the sexual misconduct. That section of canon law set 16 as the age of adulthood, so — at the behest of his clerical advisors — Aymond indicated to the Vatican office which oversees clerical abuse cases that Hart had not abused a minor in this case, the sources said.

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And people wonder why faith in the Church is lower than ever.