Tuesday, November 12, 2019

The Local Scandal

The news recently came from Rome that a certain retired and now imprisoned priest of the Boise Diocese has been deposed from the clerical state.  

Now-Mr. William Thomas Faucher pled guilty last year to a selection of felony charges of possessing and distributing child porn, out of about a couple dozen counts.  Despite the support of prominent Boise citizens, like Mayor Chris Bieter, and Faucher’s characterization of himself as “one really sick puppy” who “screwed up big time,” and his argument that he needed to be placed on probation so he could be free to help people in the community, he received a 25-year fixed prison sentence.  That means Faucher, who is now in his 70s, will not be eligible for parole until he has served 25 years, making this effectively a life sentence. The sentence is now up on appeal before the Idaho Supreme Court.

    There is plenty of news coverage of the depth and breadth and height of Faucher’s satanic depravity, which led him to amass a collection of exceptionally violent child porn images and videos numbering in the thousands.  There is no need, then, to darken this space with descriptions of these, or the sacrileges he boasted of committing, or the chat room conversations with other degenerates that police found on his computer. Just the Information (that is, the charging document) filed in the district court makes sickening reading.

But those who profess to have been shocked by the discovery of Faucher’s filthy proclivities should, on further reflection, probably not be shocked.  Faucher gave us a window onto his character during his prejudgment stint in jail by his public outpourings.  He published a newsletter in which he gave his supporters the benefit, among other things, of his complaints about the food, his complaints about access to television, his complaints about the consequences he was facing, and his great condescension in forgiving the prosecutor, the bishop and others who worked to put him behind bars.  He granted a jailhouse interview with the press in which he blamed the late Bishop Michael Driscoll for his plight, and shared his delusional belief that his legacy would not be as a priest who was into child porn. Even his supporters, while trying to make him sound good to the media, painted a picture of a character marked by ice-cold arrogance and viciousness toward anyone who disagreed with his views. Many saints have been imprisoned without having committed any crimes. Can you think of any who wasted time on recriminations?

But Faucher has been letting his biggest red freak flag fly for many years: his longtime public dissent from the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual morality.  He was for years a darling of the left for his pro-gay politics, even going so far as to print an editorial in the local paper in support of same-sex “marriage.”  For this alone he should have been suspended, yet the diocese left him untouched. Dealing with him fell to the secular authorities, almost a decade and a half later.  

As I have previously noted in this space, we cannot throw out the Ten Commandments without also forfeiting the protection they afford.  It makes no sense to expect someone to actually abide in his private life by moral laws that he publicly rejects. Why, if you publicly deride the moral law, would you go to the trouble of living by it when no one is looking, and preying on innocent people in order to feed the appetites that that law does not restrain? And if priests publicly deride the moral law, they betray their whole mission as priests. They not only sin themselves, but also drag others down with them. Where is the faith of bishops who leave the Eucharistic Lord and their flocks in the hands of these filthy soul-murderers?

I hope for two things out of this sordid business.  First, Christ died and poured out every drop of His Blood for the salvation of William Thomas Faucher, as much as He did for me.  I hope that, before he dies, Faucher realizes the enormity of what he has done, repents of his evil ways and converts, so that he will be saved from going to hell.  Second, I hope our current bishop, for the sake of his own soul and for the souls under his care, will turf out all the dirty priests in his diocese, and that he will single out for particular attention any other clergy who share Faucher’s views on sexuality.  Sex perverts network and stick together, and cover for each other — at least until someone outlives his usefulness. Did Faucher outlive his usefulness? Was it in fact another pervert that turned him in, for reasons having nothing to do with the wrongfulness of his acts? Was it the merest of coincidences that in 2005, Faucher had a deacon in his parish who also went to prison for child porn?  It is in any case hard to credit that someone with such an extensive collection of porn as Faucher’s is a newcomer to the vice, or that he could have been into it, and the drugs he was also caught with, for so long, with absolutely no one noticing.   

There is no real dichotomy between a man’s private life and his public persona.  We are not talking here about singular instances of someone doing something wrong, or something stupid.  Everyone who lives long enough will, sooner or later, do something he later regrets. But evil habits, especially unrepented ones, are another matter.  And if you are a Catholic priest, it matters very much whether you hew to the entire Deposit of Faith, since you are charged with the grave responsibility of upholding and promulgating it.  You cannot have heterodoxy alongside holiness, as the case of Mr. Faucher amply proves.

5 comments:

  1. I haven't been following this, but I looked up some images. He's one nasty looking guy. I wonder how these priest manage to go for decades without anyone noticing or saying anything.

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  2. Adrienne, my theory is, they don't not notice. Bishop Driscoll clearly noticed, but did not remedy, Faucher's public dissent from Catholic teaching. We know he noticed, because he issued a public statement about Faucher's editorial on same-sex "marriage" in which he merely asserted Faucher's stance differed from his own opinions as bishop and treated the incident as a mere free-speech issue. And there it ended.

    It seems to me we live in a time when filth pervades the hierarchy, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, of priests and bishops are dirty. I doubt Faucher is alone, or that nobody knew he was up to something shady. Downloading porn may be a solitary pursuit, but scoring drugs is not. And Boise Deacon "Rap" Howell, who got nailed for child porn in 2005, was out of Faucher's parish. I think the bishop needs to investigate this.

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  3. The building is only as good as the stones that it is made of and the current Catholic Church is about to crumble into a pile of vile dust. This is not an isolated incident, this reaches from the seminaries to the Papal office. Trying times for the faithful, who are about to become the Remnant Church.

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  4. Shirley, we are certainly in tough times right now, but we must keep on keeping on. We can’t abandon our Mother!

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  5. That level of evil is hard to wrap one's mind around. It makes me wonder if, as a practical matter, a soul reaches a point of no return? Obviously, from a theological and theorectical standpoint the answer is "No".
    However, none of these evil priests ever seem to "live lives of repentence" after they're caught and defrocked. I read that the evil founder of the Legionaires for Christ continued to live with one of his mistresses, and even refused the Sacraments on his deathbed. What are we to make of that? Unlike a [presumably] sincere atheist, these priests aren't ignorant of the Final Judgement! It makes me wonder if there reaches a point where Satan has his talons in to deep to escape...

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