TRANSCRIPT: Innocent Plea After Guilty Verdict. Is Donald McGuire a Fall Guy for the Jesuits?

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A couple readers inform me that Jesuit priest Donald McGuire still maintains his innocence, even after his convictions, in Wisconsin and Illinois, for extensive pedophile crimes. So City of Angels did some digging and came up with the speech McGuire made in 2006 in Court pleading his innocence. In the name of fairness, the transcript* is copy and pasted below for readers to... digest.

I think in the statement, McGuire reveals he's astounded that the pampered entitled life he lived as a priest is now disrupted, especially since access to young boys seems to be part of that entitlement. He's being prosecuted for crimes so many other priests commit, it's not justice.

The Jesuits are better at manipulating the media than other religious orders. In four years of writing about pedophile priest crimes at CofA, I've seen the Jesuits carry out a similar pattern in three different cities.

The "Society of Jesus" seems particularly adept at slipping by without attention while the public is focused on priest sex crimes somewhere else. The end result is Jesuit priest sex crimes rarely make the news, Jesuit perpetrators' names rarely even make it into print. The Jesuits quietly pay out settlements and sustain a veneer of “education, intellectual research and promoting social justice” per Wikipedia

In Californnia, the Jesuits quietly paid more than a million dollars average to dozens of plaintiffs around the state between 2005 and 2007 in civil cases that resulted from the one-year window open in the statute of limitations in this state in 2003.

Now two City of Angels readers claim Donald McGuire did not receive a fair trial in Illinois or Wisconsin.

Not that the priest is innocent of pedophilia, but that the Jesuits maneuvered their way through justice, and the media came along, putting the focus on one priest, Donald McGuire, when in fact there are several other Jesuit priests or brothers accused of pedophilia in Chicago and the Midwest, and the Jesuits just keep it to themselves.

We've seen the Jesuit PR-justice machine at work in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and now Chicago if the claims about McGuire are true.

In Santa Barbara there is significant coverage of St. Anthony’s Seminary with its dozens of Franciscan pedophiles, and almost nothing ever written about Jesuits who were stationed in the same beach town.

A few miles south in Los Angeles, the Jesuits quietly settled months before the rest of the L.A. religious orders, and Jesuits were not part of the global settlement, where the L.A. archdiocese and the rest of the religious orders paid out $660 million to 510 people July 2007.

In fact one of the reader-sources tells a story of being man-boy handled himself as a teenager in the 1960s by another Jesuit priest, but he fought off the assault. That perpetrator is still in a position of power in the Jesuit community in Chicago.

The story of that assault, naming a perpetrator who has never been named before in print, will be coming up in a story soon to come at City of Angels.

Meantime, City of Angels acquired a portion of transcript from the post sentencing statement made by McGuire, in 2006 Walworth County, Wisconsin. The 77 year old Jesuit priest had just been convicted of indecent behavior with two boys on retreats in Wisconsin in the 1960s.

SF Weekly described McGuire’s statements here as “a rambling soliloquy in which he compared himself to Socrates, St. Thomas More, and Jesus” and that McGuire in his post sentencing speech “has resolutely declined to embrace a concept at the very core of Catholicism: repentance.”

McGuire's speech, as I read it, reveals a man showing his age as he rambles. He sounds like he is trying to please the judge, when it’s really too late, he’s already been sentenced, well here, read it for yourself, and decide:

TRANSCRIPT: Donald McGuire appeals to the Court:

8 MR. BOYLE: Father McGuire is ready to
19 make a statement to you.
20 THE COURT: Okay, Father McGuire .
21 FATHER MCGUIRE: Your Honor , and I do
22 honor you and the judicial office that you bear.
23 I pray that you honor me and the priestly office
24 I have had to bear for 45 years in spite of my
25 absolute silence during the trial when so many terrible things were said about me.


You could very well think I'm guilty because I chose to say nothing in my defense, but, Your Honor, you are looking at an innocent man, innocent of the heinous crimes , disgusting, of which I was accused and for which I stand convicted here before you , awaiting your sentence.

I now see that my decision to remain
silent was a mistake . I can only say that I
promise you with my hand , and I have brought my
bible here, with my hand on this book, this
sacred book, that I will testify in my defense if
I am given the opportunity in a new trial.

You know that Wisconsin was a second
home to me from the ages of five to ten not far
from here at Lake Delavan, Lake Lawn where I swam
and romped and boated with my brothers and
sisters and my cousins.

I am innocent today as when I spent
whole summers from 11 to 16 at the Paulist
Choristers summer school in Rhinelander, Minocqua
and Sayner in Northern Wisconsin , and I was a
lifeguard and we practiced all morning learning
the new music, and we would sing around the
world, and in the afternoon we could begin to
play, and we played .

One of our tricks was because you
are a choir boy, they look down on you, so one of
the tricks was we would take on the neighborhood
team of any kid in a choir and of course we would
-we played so much together we rarely lost , so
I was up in Rhinelander and Minocqua in northern
Wisconsin at those summer schools.
At the age of 15 I won $50 for swimming
across Lake Big St. Germain. You know what $50
was in those days? My mother could feed the
family for the next two months. I shared my
dream of the Jesuit priesthood with my buddy John
Reidy who later was secretary to the government
Illinois.

Three months earlier when I was 16 the
Jesuits sent me my letter of acceptance. On the
22nd of August I got my -- I left and entered
Jesuit novitiate and began the journey that has
been 59 years long as Jesuit and 45 as a priest.
I have been thinking from the beginning
this is a whole new experience for me never
having been in court for a parking ticket, but I.
see your calling and mine are not very different .
70
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1 My closest friend was my older brother
2 Joe. Joe was a first - rate lawyer in Chicago .
3 When I spoke at his funeral mass in May of 1996,
4 I began by saying, a few days ago I just closed a
5 conversation which began , when I was 15 and Joe
6 was 20 just back from the U. S . Army Air Corp .
7 after World War II.

8 He wanted to go back to school , so I
9 had to refresh his Latin every night after my
10 homework. We always planned to write a book
11 about the work of the priesthood and the legal
12 profession . On the title page we wanted to put
13 my mother's words, you, Joseph, will be the
14 priest . Donald, you will be the lawyer.

15 Your Honor , both you and I share one
16 task, to guard and defend the truth, and that
17 consoles me because truth is forever. This brand
18 new courthouse is going to collapse in the dust .

19 In my field of archeology I see it all the time.
20 I leave people in the dust of civilizations that
21 thought they were going to last forever, and
22 everyone in this courtroom is going to pass away .
23 Probably I'll be the first, but everyone here
24 will pass away, but the truth will remain , and
25 that ' s what this is all about.

I know the business of legal justice
about - - I ' m a student of all the great codes of
law and in the history of this world . I think
law is man ' s noblest invention . I 'm consoled
because I know that this courtroom is lifted out
here by truth , and we are in the presence of the
whole court of heaven . The father, son and holy
spirit , the mother of Jesus, all the apostles,
all the saints and angels . Very often in my
prayer I ' m in their presence and we ' re in that
presence.

I think of St . Paul who had to be aware
of the same thing . He spoke of a cloud of
witnesses that surrounded him . I'll never forget
when a moment in the summer of 1969 on the
Acropolis in Athens, Greece that blessed man John
Gooch was at my side as was Sean Costello who
sits across this courtroom with three other young
men .

And we just found the 15 year old
brilliant Chris Kronberg who was lost for three
hours , and I ' ll never forget I said, Chris , where
have you been? He turned around and there he
was , sitting on a broken fallen ancient pillar,
looking up at the noblest building in the world,
the Parthenon.

He said, right here, Father. Can't I stay until sunset?

I think every human being should have to sit here and meditate a few hours.

My research into my defense brought to
light the sad early death of this outstanding
student of mine. You know, it’s never easy to
lose a son.

(To continue reading see where this story is posted in full at City of Angels in full, here.)

I look back at literally thousands
of them. I am humbled when I think of the
company of saints I'm called to join here.

Three especially come to my mind who
have stood before a judge as I do today,
Socrates, 70 years of age, Athens, 400 B . C . ;
Jesus of Nazareth, 33 years of age, Jerusalem, 37
A. D. ; St. Thomas More , 57 years of age, London ,
1535. These three men have been my constant
companions in my life. They have influenced me
profoundly .

Socrates, who influenced me to pursue
the Classics of Greece and Rome, was falsely
accused of corrupting youth because he taught
them to be critical of themselves and Athens
their city state . Completely innocent, Socrates
gave up his life rather than stop teaching the
truth to young men. He said, the unexamined life
is not worth living .

Jesus whom I have sought all my life to
know , love and imitate taught us to repent, that
is, to turn away from falsehood and evil and turn
to truth and goodness. He told his followers ,
the truth will set you free. For this, the
innocent Jesus was judged and sentenced to death.

St. Thomas More and I -- anyone
whomever I ever taught knows, of course, that the
Man for All Seasons is the greatest movie of the
20th Century. Pope John Paul II happened to agree
with me . Thomas More defined and inspired all my
academic and scholarly work. He refused to deny
the truth and condone the King's sins. And for
this, the innocent St. Thomas More was judged and
sentenced to die by beheading .

I ' m sure everyone is aware there is a
fourth enduring mold in my life, St. Ignatius of
Loyola. Both my father and mother have led me to
him. My father preceded me at St. Ignatius
college in Chicago.

Throughout my mother and dad 's
marriage which lasted until their death .
They had a Jesuit confessor. They
lived in St. Ignatius parish in Chicago, and I
buried both of them in the St. Ignatius Chapel
of the Mausoleum
at Queen of Heaven Cemetery,
Hillside, Illinois .

When at 14 years of age I made my first
retreat according to the Spiritual Exercises of
St. Ignatiolls Loyola , I learned to examine the
truth of my life twice each day, once around noon
and then before I retired . The same five steps
St . Ignatius taught me to examine my life in the
light of the truth .

Thanksgiving look up to God and thank him .
I did this at noon today as I did
last night as I have done it for 62 years ,
confronted the truth about myself twice a day .
And I teach everybody to do that.

Then I plead with the Holy Spirit to
enlighten me, show me in what way am I not
living truthfully. And the third step is
examination. And I get busy looking how I use my
time, my relationships, everything . And then I
turn to sorrow . The fourth step and there are
times when I get the gift of tears. I weep
because I fail , but I finish with a fifth step,
resolution to determine that for the rest of this
day, I'm going try to be more truthful, more like
Jesus . I don't know how other people live , but
that ' s the only way I can live .

Your Honor, I did all of this with the
image of Christ crucified before me. I've never
been closer to the crucified Christ, never in my
life . It ' s a terrible experience, but it’s
glorious . I said I want to be like him . I asked
Jesus at noon today, if you have done all this for
me. What should I do for you?

My age is already out. The secret , I'm
76 . Your Honor , I'm innocent but an imperfect man
who longs to be more perfect. My heart is full
of zeal for myself and for others . Judge, I want
you to be a saint. I want everybody in this
courtroom to be saints.

St . Paul warned that
that could only happen
if we fashioned the truth
with our lives.

Your Honor, I beg you to mercifully
stay the execution of my sentence and allow me
the opportunity to appeal this verdict and
demonstrate the innocence of my life . My will is
strong , but my health is fragile . My doctors put
it nicely, Father , your condition is guarded .

I faced death four times in the last
four months , and that was the only rescue . The
only time I weep is when I think of the burden
that all this these last three years has brought
upon so many people , yourself , everybody in this
courtroom, both sides .

I want my accusers to be sentenced .

They know that. One of them I don't really know.
I knew his mother. Victor Bender, I don't know
Victor. He was not a student . I just don't know
him . Sean Costello I know. Thank you for this
opportunity and God so help you .

THE COURT : Okay. The Court is going
to have a fairly lengthy discussion of matters
having to do with sentencing . I have to cover a
lot of bases here .

I can say I 'm glad that this
case came up after 27 years on the bench rather
than when I was first on the bench. It ' s one of
the most novel fact situations . I never have
tried a case that has gone back forty years .

I normally would not start out with
something that is not pertinent to the case, but
it was raised here by some people , so I think I
will start out with something that was said
earlier . Thomas More ' s name was brought up ,
St . Paul ' s name was brought up .
You both testified that Father was a
people have testified that Father was a saint .
Of course before St. Paul was Christian. He was...

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That's all the Transcript We Got
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I think McGuire's speech is revealing but I'm not sure of what. Surprised the Court has time for a convicted felon to go on and on like this, to be honest.

McGuire claims he does not even know his accuser… does not remember committing these crimes…

In February 2009 a federal judge in Chicago sentenced Donald McGuire Jesuit Priest to 25 years in prison.

Today McGuire is at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.

Below: From SF Weekly Story July 2009
“As the disgraced priest faces his earthly end, he has resolutely declined to embrace a concept at the very core of Catholicism: repentance. McGuire, the great confessor, has never admitted guilt in any of the instances of abuse for which he stands accused or convicted.”

Read about McGuire Under M in the database at bishopaccountability

POST SCRIPT: My take: McGuire lived in a world where priests had "entitlements" everywhere. No matter what he did, he got respect, especially from the fellow entitled in the world. By age 76 appearing in front of a Judge, McGuire lapsed into good old boy, expecting the Judge to agree the Priest is an entitled man.

Centuries of undeserved respect and secret disrespectful lives led to priests like Donald McGuire, at age 77, still not seeing that buggering little boys whom the Church has served up to you is a crime.
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The only media to report in a meaningful way about Donald McGuire's years at University of San Francisco and his California victims is SF Weekly in the July 2009 story quoted below.

One of few stories about a Los Angeles Jesuit, Fr. Mark Falvey, was in the Fresno Bee:

"Mark Falvey spent several years in China, but returned to Los Angeles in 1959 and spent 15 years at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Hollywood. Falvey is accused of abusing children younger than 12 and, in some cases, raping them, while he was at the Hollywood church."

And at City of Angels July 31, 2007:

Then there is the case of Mark Falvey who was priest and teacher in the 1960s and 70s at a Hollywood Catholic institution on Sunset Boulevard, the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, and its adjacent elementary school. According to a complaint filed in 2003 by plaintiff attorney Venus Soltan, Falvey “took a special interest in select boys, most of them small for their age.”

Falvey “Made himself well liked among students” reads the original complaint.

He carried candy in his vestment pockets. Falvey would encourage children attending Defendant Doe 2 (Blessed Sacrament School) to put their hands in his pockets to get the candy. “Falvey would often encourage the children to do this even though he no longer had candy in his pockets as a ploy to be touched by children near genitals,” reads one original complaint.

(Read original post at CityofAngels3 )

*Note re Transcript. CofA acquired it third-hand from the original, as we have No Budget for buying documents as of this date. If anything is not exactly like the original Court transcript, please let me know...- ebeling email: cityofangelslady@yahoo.com