Blood Money: Sexual Allegations in the Church, Mirrored by Judas’ Betrayal of Jesus

By Tamilynne Voelzke

We are currently in a period of recuperation from sexual abuse scandals throughout the country. Although the media tends to focus on the Catholic Church’s role in these situations, it is actually a worldwide issue involving protagonists from many different organizations; it’s just that Catholicism is much larger than any other organization, so the offenses seem more prolific than in other agencies. The Catholic Church is attempting to create procedures so that these situations never happen again, and to provide financial recompense to victims. Abusers misused their religious authority to perform these vile deeds; however, it now has become a fad to falsely accuse priests of sexual molestation in an attempt to get money, by playing on the sympathies of diocese authorities. Even after statute of limitations is passed, diocese protocol allows for such payments. Falsely accused priests are the new victims in this crisis.
Abuse by high-level clergy in Catholicism has really brought disaster on the Church. Jesus told his future disciples, “I will make you fishers of men.” The current false allegations in search of blood money are starting to smell more like rotten fish, and I don’t think that was what Jesus wanted for the end result of his priests’ efforts.
Blood Money parallels the story of the Passion of Jesus with the current betrayals faced by ordained Catholic priests, as well as similar situations faced by other people in secular circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664184442

Tamilynne Voelzke

I was raised Protestant, attended parochial schools, and graduated from a Protestant college. Coming from that strongly Protestant background, it took a lot of study for me to decide that Catholicism is the right place for me, and I came into Catholicism through the Byzantine Rite. I now live in a city that doesn’t have any Eastern Catholic parishes, so I attend a Roman Catholic parish, which has allowed me a much deeper understanding of the crisis faced by the Roman Rite parishes in my beloved Catholic Church. Recently, my priest became a victim of false allegations, and at this point I am determined to help correct the crisis the Church is currently undergoing. The theme of Christianity is that redemption was acquired for us by Jesus. We Christians all realize that His death brought us salvation, but we rarely think about the fact that while He was “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” He actually started out in obedience to the Father’s Will by condescending to become one of us in the first place! The essence of Christianity is, indeed, following Jesus’ example with the attitude of “Thy Will be done.”

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Copyright © 2021 by Tamilynne Voelzke.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 07/19/2021

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

CHAPTER ONE

THE PASSION IN BETRAYAL

Judas Betrays Jesus with a Kiss

Holy Thursday

Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Dirty Feet

CHAPTER TWO

FALSE ACCUSATIONS

Railroaded Before Trains Existed

Pilate Finds no Fault in Jesus

Associated False Accusations Today

CHAPTER THREE

THE SUICIDE OF JUDAS

Dark Mystery

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MYSTERY OF JUDAS HANGS OVER OUR TIME

Railroaded Priests Assumed Guilty

Judas’ Death Paralleled in Today’s World

CHAPTER FIVE

MODERN DAY FALSELY ACCUSED PRIESTS

Ordained into Christ

The Priest Who Died of a Broken Heart

The Cardinal Alone in a Birdcage

Monsignor Craig Rebuilt His Parish Stone by Stone

Byzantine Catholics Are also Accused

Accusations Come out of the Woodwork

CHAPTER SIX

ACCUSED NON-CATHOLICS

Protestant Pastors

Public School Teachers

Boy Scouts of America

Pro-Life Speaker Accused of Child Abuse

CHAPTER SEVEN

GUILT OR INNOCENCE

Guilt or Innocence

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

CONCLUSION

FISHERS OF MEN, NOT OF ROTTEN FISH

Dedicated To

Monsignor Craig Harrison,

My Parish Priest and Pastor

Introduction

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

In the days when the Mafia had a lot of underlying control in this country, they tended to rely on hit men to enforce their illegal power. The mob boss would pay the hit man a sum of cash known as blood money for the atrocious murder of someone seen as a liability – or simply a quick murder of a powerful competitor. Overall, this term has evolved in the vernacular to include not only payment for a murder, but any money gained at the expense/suffering of others.¹

The intended focus of this book is the widespread use of false allegations to take advantage of the true molestations in the current sexual crisis throughout the Church, but there is a variety of other issues that also encompass the blood money paradigm; some of them will be discussed in this book as well. These include, among others, ambulance-chasing law firms, political activist groups that claim Catholic roots or lay management, and Catholic malcontents who dislike current Catholic practices. There are even situations of allegations made falsely against a person (priest or otherwise) who the accuser wants to destroy for the sake of a vendetta.

Victims of priests in the sexual abuse scandal rightfully asked for some financial restitution for the ordeals they suffered. However, as a result of this situation, law firms see the potential of additional exorbitant lawsuits that may be paid in the future on similar cases. A variety of political groups are constantly on attack against the Catholic Church, citing sexual abuses that have been dealt with years ago. These attacks are then used by the legal firms to diminish public opinion of the Church. The new trend is to imitate the high-paying lawsuits of actual molestation cases by creating a false accusation against an innocent priest, in the hope that a diocese will choose to pay the accuser in order to avoid court costs. There is also the phenomenon that, after a crash of a bus holding 50 people, sometimes 100 people file claims that they were on the bus.²

Currently the secular world has become an allegorical version of the Mafia, with the media as their legal hit men, receiving blood money from the immediate social murder of a dedicated innocent priest by shooting down his previously pristine reputation. This blood money can come simply in the form of career accolades for the reporter, but it can also result in cash bonuses and longer term pay increases. Some of these Mafia countertypes see the Church as a challenging competitor for the loyalty of the public. To others, Christianity is a defiant liability, because its teachings are directly opposed to the relativistic philosophies taught by the modern world. We know that slander kills, always, Pope Francis said according to the news service’s translation of a Sept. 25 speech. This diabolical cancer which arises from the desire to destroy a person’s reputation also attacks the rest of the ecclesial body.³

In our current crisis of faith, the secular hit men have discovered an opportunity to execute their agenda by attacking the pastors of the churches. The secular world has found many Judases out there who are easy to sway with the almighty buck when they are offered blood money to destroy the reputation of a priest currently in their lives, or who they knew at some time in the past. Even back at the time of Christ, the enemy knew that the result of blood money is not only crucifixion, but would also subtly trigger the suicide of Judas. In today’s day and age, suicide does not have to mean physical death; it can be death of reputation, personality, financial stability, etc. For example, a falsely accused priest in Minnesota was awarded $13,500 by a jury that found that the accuser’s allegations were false.⁴ This could amount to the financial suicide of the accuser in search of an easy dollar.

Furthermore, in our modern world, one’s career is often considered their life, and there are cases of owners of activist groups who, in attempting to destroy the reputation of an innocent priest, find their own reputations destroyed when their truly underhanded and false claims are revealed.

The world is always attempting to undermine God and replace Him with itself. In modern times we have seen this, for example, with Christmas decorations disallowed in public environments, challenges against adding In God We Trust to public assets such as