He’ll take children exactly as God created them — in their birthday suits.

A deacon at St. Joseph’s Church in Fullerton, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, was arrested last week for possession of child pornography after Verizon detected images and videos of children performing sexual acts.

William Steven Albaugh, a 67-year old retiree ordained as a Catholic deacon in 1996, was taken into custody by Baltimore County Police officers on March 1. He admitted to collecting child pornography since the 1970s.

[image via Arstechnica]

Cardinals from around the world are jetting to Vatican City in their customary high style, to choose a new pontiff. And what a gaggle of splendiferous human beings it is!

[D]e­spite calls from many Catholics, [Pope Benedict] nev­er re­moved prelates who, court cases and doc­u­ments re­vealed, put chil­dren at risk by fail­ing to re­port pe­dophiles or re­move them from the priest­hood.

It is not that these car­di­nals be­haved so dif­fer­ent­ly from the oth­ers, or that they do not have achieve­ments to their names. It is just that they hap­pened to come from pin­points on the Cath­o­lic world map where long-hid­den se­crets be­came pub­lic be­cause vic­tims or­ga­nized, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in­ves­ti­gat­ed, lawyers sued or the news me­dia paid at­ten­tion.

They in­clude car­di­nals from Bel­gium, Chile and It­aly. They in­clude the dean of the Col­lege of Car­di­nals, An­ge­lo So­dano, who is ac­cused of tak­ing large mon­e­tary gifts from a re­li­gious or­der, the Le­gion of Christ, and halt­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to its founder, the Rev. Mar­cial Ma­ciel — who was later ex­posed as a patho­log­i­cal abuser and liar.

They al­so in­clude car­di­nals re­viled by many in their own coun­tries, like Car­di­nal Sean Brady, the pri­mate of All Ire­land, who sur­vived an up­roar af­ter gov­ern­ment in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­cov­ered en­demic cov­er-ups of the sex­ual and phys­i­cal abuse of mi­nors.

“There’s so many of them,” said Jus­tice Anne Burke, a judge in Il­li­nois who served on the Amer­i­can bish­ops’ first ad­vi­so­ry board 10 years ago. “They all have par­tici­pated in one way or an­other in hav­ing ac­tual in­for­ma­tion about crim­i­nal con­duct, and not do­ing any­thing about it.”

The conclave is stacked with staunch conservatives of considerably advanced years. That means the possibility that the next pope will stand for contrition and conciliation is about as big as the chance that he’ll celebrate his new title by performing The Vatican Rag in the middle of St. Peter’s Square.

Not that he’d pull it off quite as well as Tom Lehrer did.

[color image via Pilgrim’s Footsteps]

The trial against Gilberto Valle kicked off yesterday. Valle is the New York City cop who was arrested last fall on charges that he used NYPD databases to compile a list of about a hundred women he allegedly wanted to torture, cook, and eat. The would-be cannibal was turned on in by his wife, Kathleen Mangan-Valle, who had discovered through chat logs on her husband’s computer that he apparently intended to murder and eat her too.

Gilberto Valle maintains that he was only fantasizing about these things, and had no intention of committing any actual crimes.

About one target, he wrote

I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus … cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible.

The Valles are practicing Catholics. Gilberto wed Kathleen only three summers ago in St. Aloysius Church in Spokane, Washington, where he swore he’d love and support her until death do the doting duo apart. (Presumably, his vows to the Almighty didn’t include anything about gutting his wife and eating her flesh.)

The couple has a child, whose image was presented in court during the wife’s testimony.

[J]urors were shown a photo of [Valle] in his NYPD uniform, beaming as he held to his chest his cherubic baby girl, who was wearing a fuzzy pink hooded jumper with bear ears. Asked to describe the image, Mangan-Valle responded, “It’s before church, before a Holy Name Society breakfast,” then sobbed uncontrollably.

The Holy Name Society “promotes reverence for the Sacred Names of God and Jesus Christ … and the personal sanctification and holiness of its members.”

Even if he’s found not guilty, the personal holiness of Gilberto Valle is, let’s say, still a few muffins short of a full breakfast.

Valle is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as a man with a similar penchant for fetishistic torture-and-cannibalism fantasies: Tampa-area puppeteer Robert Brown. Brown was arrested last July on charges of planning to kidnap, rape, murder, and eat a child. Like Valle, he’s a loyal churchgoer. He takes his religious holidays seriously, remarking about his intended victim, a young boy he knew from church:

…his thighs and butt cheeks would be fantastic for easter.

(Insert obligatory joke about fava beans and a nice chianti.)

Valle, too, felt that a church holiday calls for something extra-festive:

I’m planning on getting some girl meat… this November… for Thanksgiving.

It’s noteworthy that the Eucharist ritual of swallowing the body of Christ, in the words of this devout Catholic publication, means that

…the Holy Communion does involve eating human flesh and blood.

Their words, not mine. Maybe the forbidden apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree.

[image via MailOnline]

Another week, another Catholic sex scandal. This one involves Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain.

O’Brien, who is due to retire next month, has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights, condemning homosexuality as immoral, opposing gay adoption, and most recently arguing that same-sex marriages would be “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of those involved”.

So you know what comes next, right? Sure you do. Cardinal O’Brien turns out to be a closet queen who has been secretly trying to sample the forbidden fruits under the frocks of his fellow clergymen — over whom he has near-total ecclesiastical authority.

So far, four priests have filed written complaints with the Vatican, alleging that they were sexually accosted by their spiritual leader. They did so before Pope Benedict announced his resignation, so this doesn’t appear to be an attempt to weaken the cardinal’s position in the notoriously intrigue-riddled 117-member conclave that is set to elect a new pope. The UK Observer has more.

UPDATE: Apologizing for “failures” during his ministry, the cardinal has resigned.

[image via Daily Record]

Need crystal meth? Dildos? Leather masks? Porn mags? Call 1-800-PRIESTS.

But seriously: Even by the perennially messed-up standards of the Roman Catholic church, Monsignor Kevin Wallin is, as they say, a piece of work. The New York Times explains:

One church worker told diocesan officials that parades of men were visiting Monsignor Wallin at the rectory at all hours. The diocese looked into it, and, as [church spokesman] Mr. Wallace said, “We heard enough to believe that he was engaged in sexual activity in the rectory.” Other church workers said he was also involved in cross-dressing, as were some of his visitors.

When his colleagues decided to look a little closer, they

…found a bag stowed in the rectory containing adult pornographic videos, sexual toys and leather masks.

Then things got weird. Like, all druggy and stuff.

[Wallin] was living in a snug apartment in a matter-of-fact two-story building in Waterbury, in a humble neighborhood of shoebox-shaped apartments. He was also renting the unit across the hall from him, where authorities said a confederate lived. This was his new demarcated principality, where law enforcement officials said he sold crystal meth. At least once, they said, he hid drugs in a magazine and made the exchange in a parking lot. An informant told agents that the priest was also an addict.

So Wallin at least wasn’t addicted to prepubescent cock, for a change. Good. I like a man who doesn’t bow to peer pressure.

New York drug enforcement agents got on to him from a New York drug distributor who said he met the priest at a party in early 2012 and began buying from him. The man became an informer. New York agents tipped off Connecticut agents, who enlisted help from the State Police. An undercover officer, according to authorities, made six drug purchases from Monsignor Wallin. …

Neighbors said men streamed into Monsignor Wallin’s apartment, many of them arriving in cars like BMWs and Corvettes. Sounds of sex could be heard. He stored cases of good wine in the basement, as well as glass pipes and bottles of butane. He was seen doing his laundry, which included lace panties and other articles of women’s clothing. Officials said Mr. Wallin was buying an adult toy store in North Haven called Land of Oz and Dorothy’s Place. Authorities suspect that he wanted to use it to launder drug money.

Through it all, the Bible kept exerting a certain, um, influence on Mr. Wallin.

Presumably to make the purchase, he incorporated a business called Rahab and Endor. Rahab was a woman mentioned in the Book of Joshua usually described as a prostitute. Endor may refer to the Witch of Endor, a sorceress identified in the Bible.

Wicked!

“You looked at him like he was God, practically,” said Charlie Hall, a Danbury parishioner who lives in a shelter. “But now you realize, he’s just human, like all the rest of us.”

Aye. I would hope that that’s his flock’s takeaway. Teaching them to see the man behind the curtain may be the best thing the Monsignor has ever done.

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Note 1: Kevin Wallin is innocent until proven guilty.
Note 2: The drug war is stupid.
Note 3: I don’t personally care whether priests make the beast with two backs, or with whom, and how, as long as their partners are consenting adults.
But if the allegations prove true, did Mr. Wallin break his priestly vows, and violate all Jesus-y decency he told his colleagues and parishioners he stood for? Yessum, that he did.