The Magical Monstrance​
by David Tracy
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April 7, 2026
“Imagine” a famous Beatles song. No, not that one, rather “Magical Mystery Tour.” I’m sure you remember the melody. Now, substitute my parody lyrics:
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La, La, The Magical Monstrance Show is waiting to take you astray, waiting to take you astray, take you astray.
La, La, The Magical Monstrance Show is coming to take you astray, coming to take you astray, take you astray.
La, La, The Magical Monstrance Show is dying to take you astray, dying to take you astray, take you astray.
A few weeks ago, our parish staged a Lenten mission, bringing in a visiting priest to officiate. By my reckoning, it was insightful and better than some I had witnessed in years past. On the last of the four evenings, a ritual I had never experienced before surprised me. After Communion, the priest explained that many miraculous cures, both physical and psychological, tie to the body of Jesus. Before he began Benediction, he invited the congregation, seeking healing of some sort, to proceed after Benediction to the altar to touch the Monstrance.
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Having never seen this ritual before, my mind raced to the Sinclair Lewis novel, Elmer Gantry. The famous altar calls of many evangelical healers, such as Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman, revived childhood memories of watching them on television.
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I mean no disrespect to those people, because I truly believe in divine miracles and that prayer and inspiration can mentor or encourage them. As a child, I watched them on television with fascination. In juvenile frivolity, my brother and I would mimic the laying-on of hands and exclaimed to each other, “BE HEALED!” It was mildly disrespectful, but being raised Catholic and attending a Catholic grade school, it was more a spectacle of a religious practice that was beyond our experience.
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Many years later, while I was sitting in this Lenten mission with my mind racing back to childhood, my fascination had turned to mild skepticism. My first thought was, wait; we had just received the body of Jesus at Communion. How much closer could we get to our Savior? If a healing were to be made available, would a touch outplay the actual consumption of Jesus during Communion? At first, I thought that perhaps this altar call was the difference. An integral part of receiving a miracle is making oneself open to the reception. So, maybe that was where I was being too critical. But with reflection, as people were streaming to the altar for a touch, I countered myself that Catholics, disposed to receive the Eucharist, do an altar call every time they process for Communion. Another interesting phenomenon was that the people who made the altar call (almost the entire congregation) knelt down where the former altar rails were located to afford themselves “The Magic Touch.” (Excuse me, another song that ran through my distracted mind.) Modernist priests consider kneeling at the altar to receive the Eucharist ostentatious and have taken the rails away. However, they allow a similar practice, in the exact same location, for the opportunity to “touch and be healed.”
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I eventually determined that the ritual smacked of superstition. As I analyzed it more, some other suppositions occupied my thoughts. For example, I asked myself, “If touching the Monstrance by the faithful was now part of our liturgy, why, during Benediction, does the priest don the cope and the humeral veil?” Doesn’t it seem ironic? Has the centuries-old liturgy simply turned into a ritualized show bordering on superstition? Why does the priest during the elevation protect his hands from touching the sacred vessel? Could it be a sign that he doesn’t want to be healed, or that he’s not worthy? Further, in keeping with the ritual, why doesn’t the celebrant use tongs to distribute the sacred body and blood, similar to the spoon used in the Eastern Rite? And ultimately, we need to ask: Why are the faithful allowed to receive the Eucharist by hand? It seems to me, Vatican II has us bewildered, coming and going.
Driving home that evening, I couldn’t get the spectacle out of my thoughts. My skeptical mind posited that perhaps I was naïve or maybe old-fashioned in my preferred liturgy. I filed away the experience for future reference.
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This week, revelations showed that then Father Robert Prevost had posed in Peru years ago, prostrate before Pachamama. I also recalled that Pope Francis allowed Pachamama to be placed in a Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. With more research, I found St. John Paul II had participated in a few pagan ceremonies while on his ecumenical trip to Benin and Togo. I could not determine for certain whether the Pope actually poured water from a “sacred cucumber” skin in a Voodoo ceremony. His critics say he did, while his supporters say the claim is a distortion of his intent to merely honor the indigenous peoples’ ancestors.
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I grew up and became acculturated in the post-Vatican II Church. It wasn’t until I was in my fifties, battling with my archdiocese to have a clerical abuser removed from my parish, that I turned a critical eye to Vatican II. My critique revealed that clerical sexual abuse existed well before Vatican II, centuries before. The Traditionalist claim that the sexual abuse problem started after Vatican II is not historically accurate. (I suggest Dyan Elliott’s book, The Corrupter of Boys.) However, I could not find evidence that the Catholic hierarchy, before Vatican II, exhibited a close, personal dalliance with pagan ritual. Supporters of St. John Paul the Great will defend his actions as being purely ecumenical. Supporters of Pope Francis and Pope Leo will dismiss criticism as being “traditional” and outdated.
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In 2024, Pope Francis informed an interfaith gathering that “All religions are paths to God. (The paths) are like different languages that express the divine.” I find it intriguing that Francis did not include Latin among his favored languages and had sidelined it. John Paul II, as Pope, maintained that all religions contain the “Seeds of the Word,” and that “sincere obedience to conscience” awards salvation to followers of other religions. Ecumenism aside, their teaching seems to plant “seeds of doubt.” In an age of “Nones,” Modernists do not exactly offer a dynamic motivation to attend church regularly, be it Catholic or any denomination. If “sincere obedience to conscience” can lead to salvation, why bother with a formal celebration? Why increase one’s carbon footprint by driving to any type of liturgy? (Is our worship causing climate change? Oh, no!) Is not a twelve-year-old kid, with a good conscience, able to experiment with an Ouija board? Why should a busy mother and father drag their children to Mass and risk them being befriended by a pedophile or ephebophile priest? Why not stay home and, with “sincere conscience,” watch Mass on EWTN or even reruns of the good Pastor Charles Stanley or, perhaps, a live televised Creflo Dollar?
The Pope and bishops within the Catholic Church cannot have it both ways. Either Jesus is Lord and Savior, or he is not. Either Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” or he is not. The Catholic Church is either more than just a “privileged path” or the Good News is being stretched.
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A traditionalist friend of mine, with exaggerated sarcasm, says that since Vatican II, God is renewing the Catholic Church using cults and false apparitions, because that is about all He has left to work with. Perhaps he now has to include touching “The Magical Monstrance.”
Trinity or Triumvirate?​
by David Tracy
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March 19, 2026
From the website Complicit Clergy
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​​The hierarchy of the Catholic Church exhibits symptoms of a general schizophrenia. Even a staunch defender of Catholic clericalism and the status quo must admit that many bishops and their actions seem diametrically opposed to the lessons taught in the Gospels.
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Catholic bishops have two distinct models from which to choose when making leadership decisions. One is spiritual and comes to us as the Holy Trinity. The other is secular, taking the example of the ancient Roman Triumvirate.
In our creed, we Catholics acknowledge an omnipotent father. We believe that his son, Jesus of Nazareth, incarnated in the world and that his death and resurrection afforded all men redemption. We also believe in a Spirit or Ghost (Modernist or Trad phraseology preference) who affords us a plethora of gifts that include wisdom, discernment, and courage, to name a few.
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The other governance model, the triumvirate, made itself twice famous in ancient Roman history. Regardless of the number, the essence of the triumvirate model is power through collusion. The system is an autocracy that is unchecked by any other political entity.
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The Trinity unites. One in three and three in one is the unifying mystery. It is an outstanding model of governance. However, both triumvirates devolved into suspicious rivalry and outright civil war, which resulted in dictatorship and a loss of individual freedom and liberty. (Some could opine that the current Vatican hierarchy and the state of division within the universal church mirrors the demise of the Roman Triumvirates. Can schism be on the horizon?)
Since Constantine, the governing style and culture of the Catholic Church, is surviving vestiges of the Roman Empire. Ancient Rome’s pantheon is alive in today’s Catholic Church. The large number of movements, either supported or tolerated by the Vatican, adeptly mimics the ancient’s preoccupation with cults and mysticism. Much of the Roman bureaucracy, legal tradition, and administrative customs were continued in the Catholic Church with only minor modifications. The triumvirate usurped democratic legitimacy by consolidating unchecked power into an autocratic class. In a similar fashion, the Vatican rules through an elite bishop caste and an ultimate executive, the pope. Along with unchecked power is the human foible that gives license to certain suspect behaviors. For the Roman Empire and the successor Catholic Church, financial and sexual liberties became perks for the ruling class. Homosexuality among the Roman emperors, senatorial class, and the equestrian class found approval. The only ancient Roman restriction on pedophilia depended on the status of the abused child. A free boy or girl was legally and by custom protected, whereas slaves were inconsequential for virtually any type of action or abuse.
On abuse, Catholic Church governance is worse than the triumvirates that ruled Roman society. Throughout its long history, the Catholic Church made little or no distinction between class statuses for abuse. In fact, the abuse of boys in Catholic monasteries actually reclassified free men into a subordinate status through the very act of sexual domination. While the same probably happened in Roman history, it was actually illegal and outside of the social norm. According to Dyan Elliott in her book, The Corruptor of Boys, the practice within the Catholic Church became licit in a de facto sense. Indeed, whereas Roman law clearly named the practice illegal, medieval Catholic adjudications actually named young boys as “tempters” of monks and subjected them to corporal punishment. The actions of many present-day bishops towards victims of sexual abuse show a similar dehumanizing attitude. The origins of this thinking originated in the ancient Roman Empire, adopted normalcy in the Church down through the centuries, and are still in place today within the Vatican. I will offer an example of such an action.
I have heard many homilies on Mt 3:37 exhorting me to strive for integrity and honesty in my dealings with others. These homilies are very much from the Trinity side of the ledger. The triumvirate sentiment is best exemplified by the Catholic Church bishops’ use of non-disclosure-agreements (NDAs) in dealing with abuse cases. Instead of hearing Jesus’ admonition to “let your yes be yes and your no be no,” the bishops listened more to triumvirate inspired lawyers who instead advise “let your yes mean sometimes and your no, mean maybe.”
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The Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this issue from the standpoint of cheap grace versus costly grace. For the Lutheran minister, cheap grace is like preaching of forgiveness without confession. (I’ve heard many Modernist homilies pose the following conundrum–“Just because there may be a hell does not mean that anyone has to be there.” Clearly, the classic Modernist favors cheap grace as a paragon.) Bonhoeffer compares the cheap version to grace with no discipleship, no cross. For Bonhoeffer, if our grace is not costly, it is not following Jesus. The Gospels address and teach grace as a costly endeavor. To follow the Gospel can cost a man his life, just as it cost God the life of his son. The Lutheran experienced this lesson intimately, and for it he gave the ultimate. His example is far from joining in with the triumvirate. I don’t believe many bishops can claim the same status on a wide variety of issues confronting the world today.
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In the Archdiocese of Denver, circa 2011, I began an effort to remove Fr. James Moreno from ministry based upon reports of sexual abuse by parents who had observed him in action with their son. The vicar of priests in the Archdiocese of Denver, Monsignor Schmitz, stonewalled my efforts, telling me that the problem in our parish was me, not Fr. Moreno. At about the same time, the Vatican reassigned Archbishop Chaput to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Vatican named Bishop James Conley as the Denver apostolic administrator before Samuel Aquila replaced Chaput.
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Since Chaput and Schmitz dismissed by efforts, I held hope that Conley, with a set of fresh eyes, would read the situation differently and act with logic. My letter to Conley outlining my concerns went unanswered. Two months later, I received a professionally written fundraising letter from Conley requesting donations for the archdiocesan annual campaign. After strategically stroking a check and including it with my letter, I sent it directly to Conley. After cashing my check, I finally received a note back. Conley thanked me for my donation, but he echoed Schmitz’s estimate that the only problem in our parish was me. (In 2012, Conley was named Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. Ironically, his chosen Episcopal motto was, “Cor ad cor loquitor.” Evidently, neither my heart nor the hearts of Moreno’s victims warranted discourse. For Conley, heart to heart discourse is meant solely for matters of the triumvirate.)
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In 2020, the Colorado attorney general report on sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Denver was published. James Moreno admitted to raping a young boy in a minor seminary sixty times over a three-year period. After plying the youth with alcohol and marijuana, Moreno shared the boy with other priests who, so far, the archdiocese refuses to name. I subsequently learned from reliable sources that during Moreno’s thirty-four-year career, the Archdiocese of Denver settled ten cases involving Moreno with NDAs. Moreno was the Archdiocesan judicial vicar for a portion of his career, and his position raises the specter of blackmail and coercion that may have protected his status during his tenure.
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Collusion, blackmail, and intrigue show a triumvirate mind-set rather than Trinitarian. This is the historical reality in Denver. Former bishops have known of claims of Moreno’s abuse and yet looked the other way. Those bishops are James V. Casey, James Francis Stafford, Charles J. Chaput, James Conley, and Samuel Aquila.
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James R. Golka has been appointed the new archbishop of Denver. As bishop in the diocese of Colorado Springs, Golka seems to have already chosen the triumvirate path of governance, something which probably does not bode well for Denver. In Colorado Springs, Bishop Golka laicized a Peruvian priest who, years earlier in his career, defended sexual abuse victims in Chiclayo, Peru. The sitting bishop of Chiclayo was Robert Prevost, who allowed the abuse to go unpunished while acting as a “protective” shepherd. Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, and Golka, as well as most bishops, remind us how the triumvirate functions. It seems the Trinity is relevant only with hand actions at the start and end of prayers. Oh, and also for synodal efforts when the bishops believe the Holy
Spirit is humanly controllable.
In Praise of the Incorrigible
by David Tracy
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February 3, 2026
from the website Complicit Clergy
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I grew up in what history would reveal as the hotbed of clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Denver. What’s now known as the Highlands, in my youth, was just simply the North Side. There were six parishes and one orphanage with schools in my extended neighborhood. The Colorado Attorney General Report in 2019 identified eleven priests in these six schools who sexually abused young boys while acting as their shepherds.
The abuse all-star of this group, Fr. Harold Robert White, was an assistant at my parish during my early years in attendance. White claimed sixty child victims during his thirty-two year career. The Denver bishops played an adept shell game with White having him serve in nineteen different parishes during his tenure.
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Another parish in North Denver featured Fr. Lawrence St. Peter whose charisma and efficient administrative skills were being positioned for his advancement to the bishop ranks. His thirty-four years in the archdiocese saw him as a pastor and vicar of priests before he was named as the archdiocesan administrator when Archbishop James V. Casey died. As the interim administrator before James Stafford was named Casey’s replacement, St. Peter sanitized his personnel file. The Colorado attorney general had to reconstruct the file through triangulation based upon other abusive priests’ records and reports from psychological treatment programs in which St. Peter was sent for counseling.
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One of St. Peter’s victims was the son of a parishioner with whom the priest had developed a close friendship. Regularly the pastor would remove the youth from class under pretense that the lad was helping him with some tasks in the rectory or in the sacristy. Once alone in those places, St. Peter would rape the boy and then return him to class.
My experience many years later in the same parish had me confront Fr. James Moreno for similar behavior. A father of one of Moreno’s altar boys told me that he and his wife caught Moreno abusing their son. My efforts to remove Moreno initially failed as the archdiocese refused to take action. Moreno admitted in the 2019 investigation to have raped another young boy sixty times over a three year period while he was a spiritual counselor at a local high school seminary.
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From an early age I was branded as “incorrigible” by some of my teachers. I wasn’t a hoodlum but the Sisters of St. Joseph who educated me had their hands full. I admit what punishment I had received was only a small percentage of what I actually deserved.
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Since my experience confronting the archdiocese about Moreno, I have noted a number of commonalities centered on the problem of priestly sexual abuse. First, most clerical predation is performed on boys, either children or early teens. Second, most pedophile and ephebophile priests are homosexual. And third, most abuse performed by priests is targeted and planned, usually through a grooming process. Like hungry lions on the Serengeti, predator priests prefer to prey on the slow, the docile, the outcast, or the one somehow impaired.
I remember as a second or third grader in my parish school participating in some sort of stupid hijinx with fellow classmates close to the rectory. Being collectively witless, we allowed ourselves to be observed from a rectory window. After observing what we were doing, Fr. White was on us like white on rice. He grabbed me and another classmate by the collar. I can’t remember what my classmate did, but I do recall wiggling out of White’s grasp and running away. When I returned to school the following day, our principal, Sister Agatha Irene, grabbed me by the collar and dragged me into her office. I was threatened with expulsion, had to stay after school, and made to weed the convent garden. The only thing I remember from her lecture was, “Young man, you are incorrigible!” As a six or seven-year old kid I didn’t know what the word “incorrigible” meant. Because it sounded like “courage,” a word I did know, I somehow thought it might be some sort of a back-handed compliment. Now, some decades later, I do think there is some correlation between courage and incorrigibility. (The attorney general’s 2019 report also referred to Sister Agatha Irene. When one of White’s victim’s parents came forward with their accusation, the boy’s family met with her. She castigated the family telling them that their son was a liar and that he needed to go to confession.)
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Upon reflecting on my mischievous years, it seems to me that the last child that Fr. White would have chosen to abuse would have been someone like me.
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I have also noticed, since publishing four books on priestly sexual abuse, that the Church relies upon faithful Catholics who are compliant and demure. I have had fellow parishioners, family, and friends accuse me of “beating a dead horse.” (This is hardly true, as the sex abuse is still being covered up. From the Catholic Church’s continuing behavior it could be said that the Vatican’s opaqueness is its “one trick pony.”) Those same people have told me that however intriguing my books may be, they won’t read them because doing so may cause them to lose faith in the Church.
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In a way, most people who subscribe and read postings on Complicit Clergy and who agree with its general sentiment could also be described as “incorrigible.” The fact that an abuser would generally avoid a child or teen that he could not control speaks well for an incorrigible mind-set that we critics should exemplify.
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The current pastor at my parish has mentioned to someone that he avoids contact with me because I have “written books against the Church.” While his estimation is far from the truth, it does prove that he has never read what I have written. His avoidance is telling. It is a microcosm that illustrates that the Church still has not learned how to deal with its sordid priestly abuse problem. This same pastor has preached often on Mt. 25: 1-30 and Lk. 10: 1-10. They are good topics for preaching as they extol the virtues of non-complacency. Clearly a fan of Zacchaeus, the pastor lauds the small man’s zeal to go “over and above” his peers to be close to Our Lord. But not once did the priest correlate that complacency has compounded the problem of sexual abuse within the Church itself. And by his purposeful alienation, it appears he actually values complacency and distains the “non-complacent” in my case. Like Fr. White preferring a more docile child, it appears many in the Church like my pastor prefer “complacency” on internal Church matters and “non-complacency” with the rest of the world. The Church that continues to use the shell game to protect predatory priests and bishops now treats critics like us as non-believers or apostates. Like the shell game itself, they exclude, hide, eliminate, or ignore. They make the likes of Soapy Smith envious of their adept dexterity. They hope that along with them faithful Catholics will follow their lead and not pay attention to us. Like Fr. White decades ago, the last thing a bishop or any defender of the status quo would do is engage with the “incorrigible.”
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I am confident that many of the contributors to Complicit Clergy have experienced the alienation and ostracizing attitude of those who are compliant. I encourage my fellow critics to stay the course in efforts to better our Church and help it to fulfill Jesus’ desire to protect the widow and the orphan – the powerless. We Catholic Church critics need to embrace our incorrigibility and, in fact, expand our reach. The entrenched bishops and their allies like labeling us as “incorrigible” in a negative light. But, in truth, opposing them by revealing their noxious behavior places our “incorrigible” attitudes as a positive beacon. I urge you to keep up the good work.
The Twelve Days of Synodal Christmas
by David Tracy
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December 17, 2025 from the website Complicit Clergy
This past year has been very revealing to Catholics, many of whom question, “Where on Earth is the Holy Spirit?” There is no better time for us to reflect upon the power of the Synod than a good old-time Christmas standard. I invite you to sing along.
On the 12th day of Christmas, the Synod gave to me,
12 lying prelates,
11 bent blessings,
10 trashed Tridentines,
9 bankrupt bishoprics,
8 pervs in prison,
7 diva deacons,
6 illegals looting,
5 cancelled clerics,
4 homo hookups,
3 Tucho smooches,
2 commie popes,
and a Pachamama in a pear tree.
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Many Catholic parents lament how so many of their children, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces – baptized and even confirmed in the Catholic Church – no longer practice their faith. When Catholics read about how sexually active gays and lesbians like Gio Benitez and Rachel Maddow are welcomed into the Church while prelates like New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Pope Leo XIV remain silent, they can’t help but wonder if the Catholic Church is Catholic, or even Christian today.
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In commenting about Maddow’s reported return to the Catholic faith, Chris Jackson wrote, “If your ‘return’ requires no repentance, no amendment of life, no rupture with public sin, and no submission to the moral law, then what exactly have you returned to? A community. A political symbolism. A moral NGO with candles.” Does the Catholic Church not teach that homosexual behavior, like adultery, is sinful and contrary to biblical teachings and the natural law? If so, how can bishops and priests – many closeted homosexuals themselves – give communion to people who lead lives that do not conform to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ?
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At a time when many Catholics were leaving the Catholic Church, scandalized by the predatory actions of many priests and cover-ups by bishops, I decided that these complicit clergy were not going to disgrace my Church and destroy my faith. I began my journey into the sordid world of Vatican cover-up and intrigue by making a single-handed effort to remove an abuser from our parish. My two-year battle was eventually successful in removing a predator priest who admitted to abusing a young boy sixty times while he was the spiritual advisor in a minor seminary.
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Similar to Stephen Brady who founded Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF) whose stated mission is “to expose the network of sexual immorality among the Catholic clergy in the United States, and to expose the bishops and cardinals who have enabled their crimes,” I have undertaken a similar mission through writing books that document the widespread infection of abuse and the callous hearts that would deny temporal justice for the many victims throughout the Church’s purview. My last three books are historical fiction in which the settings and dialogue are not just entertaining, but reveal the depth of deceit that should concern all Catholics of goodwill and result in a call to action.
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I believe you will find that my works of “faction,” i.e., thinly disguised fictional accounts of factual events and real persons, are similar to works by Malachi Martin and Larry McMurtry. If you appreciate the irony and graphic nature of a Quentin Tarantino film, I’m confident you will consider reading my published works available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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Caught Between the Gospel and the Magisterium – When Sheep Have to Shepherd
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The ROMEOs – The Parable of the Prodigal
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The World Youth Day Murders
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Prohibition and the Priest
Msgr. Gene Thomas Gomulka, a well-known whistleblower, sex abuse advocate, and investigative journalist whose articles are widely read on Complicit Clergy and Substack, is currently reading Prohibition and the Priest. This is what he has to say about it:
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"After completing my Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) in Rome and having taught dogmatic theology and liturgy at a major seminary, I thought I was well-versed in the teachings and history of the Roman Catholic Church. After reading The World Youth Day Murders, and now half-way through Prohibition and the Priest, I can’t believe how much I really didn’t know about popes like John XXIII, religious orders like the Jesuits, and the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, even though I was taught by the famed church historian, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis. As an abuse advocate who is saddened by how abuse continues to be perpetuated and covered up in the Church, it’s nice to read a novel where a Theodore McCarrick figure has his beach house burned down by a seminarian who becomes the protagonist priest in the novel. Anyone concerned about the direction the Catholic Church is taking under the pontificates of Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV, and the fact that Leo has yet to discipline accused rapists like Father Marko Rupnik and over 160 bishops credibly accused of abuse, should really enjoy reading David Tracy’s books."
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While many Catholic and mainstream media sources cover up the growing rift between official Church teachings (e.g., on homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, gender ideology) and pastoral practice, such as the blessing of same sex couples and the reception of holy communion by pro-abortion politicians and celebrities, it is up to good Catholic editors, writers, journalists, and podcasters to speak truth to power. Hopefully, my books will help to defend authentic Catholic Church teachings at odds with compromising and heretical positions advanced by certain proponents of the Synodal Way.