I struggled to sleep again, last night.

This time because of a question related to the two most recent episodes of my podcast, Sacrificed.

• The Smoking Gun
• Sacrificed

What kept me up was something that hit me during, and that I couldn't stop thinking about while on, or after, my evening walk.

If the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and the Catholic Church, knew enough to put people like my abuser, Fr. LeRoy Valentine, in The Program, then why didn't they just expel them?

Apples Bad and Good

An excuse that has been put forward for the Catholic sex abuse crisis is that the church made an honest mistake in deciding to accept a few Bad Apple priests in order to make sure they got all the Good Apple priests. They HAD to do that, take that risk, because it's hard to distinguish between the Bad Apples and the Good Apples.

That makes sense.

The problem is it's bullshit.

As the existence of the The Program, and the Smoking Gun that reveals it, makes clear.

As does the handling of my abuser, Fr. LeRoy Valentine.

If the Archdiocese of St. Louis knew enough to TREAT Fr. Valentine specially — to IMMEDIATELY put him in The Program, right out of the seminary — THEN WHY DID THEY EVEN ORDAIN HIM?

WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST CAN HIM?!?

If they knew enough to route Valentine INTO The Program, then they also knew enough to route him OUT of the priesthood.

But they didn't.

And I have to wonder if the irresponsible — at best — treatment of Fr. Valentine is the thing that is so threatening to my friend the cardinal and is leading the Archdiocese of St. Louis to treat me like I don't even exist.

Convergence 

I've been thinking about the convergence of several things I raised in the two most recent episodes of Sacrificed.

• The Smoking Gun
• The Program
• The Good/Bad Apples Quandry

Beginning at the end, the Good/Bad Apples Quandry states that the Catholic Church faced...

...the risk of accepting a few bad apples in order to get all of the good ones.

Which MAKES SENSE.

Happens all the time.

How do you tell the good from the bad?

What do you do if you can't?!?

This is a common problem, going by the terms Type I and Type II errors in statistics.

The problem is it's belied by the Smoking Gun and The Program whose existence it revealed.

And how my abuser, Fr. LeRoy Valentine, was managed.

The Smoking Gun suggests it was NOT that hard to separate the Good Apples and the Bad Apples. The Archdiocese of St. Louis was able to IMMEDIATELY put my abuser in The Program. In fact, as the Smoking Gun makes clear, they were able to do that for multiple abusers.

But here's the rub.

If they knew enough about my abuser to IMMEDIATELY to put my abuser in The Program, THEN WHY THE HELL DID THEY ORDAIN HIM?!?

And not just EXPEL him?