I do wonder about things that happened in my home town of Milwaukee, mg. St. John's School for the Deaf was right next door to the seminary I attended. I never saw any people there, although the brother of a friend of mine was a student there and she never said anything bad about the deaf school. And thirty years later, I learn that the priest in charge of the school, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, was molesting students for years, at the time I was living next door. Yes, that was creepy to find that out.
We had lots of priests in the seminary as professors, but none of them ever mentioned the School for the Deaf or the priest who was in charge.
The School for the Deaf was located on a huge piece of church-owned property that included the minor and major seminaries, the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Francis, a Catholic parish church and school, and later a Catholic high school. All of these institutions interacted, but not the School for the Deaf. I heard the names of many, many priests - but never heard mention of the name of this priest who was in charge of the deaf school. I think I knew every other priest who worked on this piece of property where I lived for eight years (maybe 35-50 priests), but not this one. Interesting how he could escape unnoticed.


The Milwaukee perpetual care cemetery fund was something I was going to bring up. When people bought plots in Catholic cemeteries, they paid an endowment fee that guaranteed perpetual care of their graves. This money was banked with the rest of the assets of the diocese. When the diocese was threatened with sexual abuse claims, the diocese separated the cemeteries into a separate corporation and transferred the perpetual care funds to the cemetery corporation. Some people challenged this transfer. I think it was legitimate, but it sure made a lot of people angry. I know that from the other side, I would have been angry if I had paid good money for my parents' graves, and then lost that money to abuse settlements.

I believe that the Vatican Archives are open to scholars, just as the Library of Congress and the National Archives are open in the U.S. In all these institutions, some documents are protected for various reasons. The Vatican Museum and many areas of the Vatican are open to the public. It costs 15 euros to go to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, and 6 euros to go up into the dome of St. Peter's. The Vatican Museum has a huge amount of stuff that is reportedly of great value, but it certainly is not a state-of-the art display. The display cases look lie they haven't been dusted for a century. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is the only other museum I've seen with such funky displays of such valuable artifacts. The Vatican sure doesn't waste its money on museum maintenance.
Entrance to St. Peter's Basilica and all the basilicas in Rome, is free. Only a very few Catholic churches charge admission. Most of the Missions here in California charge admission except during worship services, and that bugs me.

-Joe-