The EWTN News / Catholic News Agency portal reports (November 5, 2026) that “Father” Laurence LaPointe, 81, a presbyter of the Diocese of Norwich (Connecticut), pleaded guilty in Baltimore City Circuit Court to a fourth-degree sex offense and common-law assault for the sexual abuse of a boy at Gilman School in the mid-1970s. The “priest” received a three-year suspended sentence and five years supervised probation with conditions barring contact with minors. The “diocese” had placed him on “ministry leave” in March when allegations surfaced; he was serving as “pastor of Corpus Christi Parish.” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown declared the state would “hold accountable anyone who abuses a position of trust.” This judicial episode lays bare the total moral and sacramental bankruptcy of the post-conciliar priesthood, a putrefaction inevitable once the lex orandi of the True Mass was abolished and the lex credendi of the Faith was replaced by Modernist anthropology.
The Counterfeit Priesthood and the Void of Sacramental Grace
The article speaks of a “Catholic priest” and a “Diocese of Norwich.” From the perspective of integral Catholic theology, these terms are usurpations of language. The man LaPointe operates within the conciliar sect, the Church of the New Advent erected upon the ruins of the True Church by the heretical antipopes beginning with John XXIII. If he was “ordained” after 1968, he received the invalid Montinian rite of priestly ordination, which defects in form and intention—suppressing the essential potestas offerendi sacrificium (power to offer sacrifice) and substituting a “presbyteral ministry” of “presiding over the assembly.” Even if he were validly ordained sub conditione prior to the liturgical revolution, his public adhesion to the Novus Ordo Missae, the heresies of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality), and his exercise of “ministry” within a schismatic structure constitute a tacit resignation of office under Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration… if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” As Fr. McDevitt notes, joining a non-Catholic sect is not required; formal heresy suffices. The “Diocese of Norwich” is not a particular Church of Christ but an administrative district of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican, devoid of jurisdiction and sacramental vitality.
Linguistic Sanitization: Bureaucracy Replaces Canonical Justice
The rhetoric of the report is steeped in the newspeak of the anti-church. We read of “ministry leave“—a bureaucratic euphemism unknown to canonical tradition, which knows only suspensio a divinis or deposition. We read of “survivors” and “trauma“—psychological categories that displace the theological reality of mortal sin crying to heaven for vengeance (peccatum clamans), the destruction of innocence, and the sacrilege of the priestly character. The Attorney General speaks of “position of trust” and “accountability“—secular legalisms that obscure the divine mandate: “He that receiveth you, receiveth me” (Luke 10:16). A true priest is alter Christus; to violate a child is to crucify Christ anew in His members. The article notes the “priest” is currently “a priest in the Diocese of Norwich“—present tense—signaling the conciliar sect’s refusal to declare the vacancy of his office ipso facto, preferring “leave” and “monitoring” over the salus animarum and the honor of God. This is the lex orandi, lex credendi of the New Advent: management replaces judgment, therapy replaces penance, the state replaces the Church.
Theological Anatomy of the Abomination: Corruptio Optimi Pessima
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches corruptio optimi pessima—the corruption of the best is the worst. The priesthood is the highest dignity on earth (St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. John Chrysostom). The Council of Trent (Sess. 23, Can. 1) defines: “If anyone shall say that there is not in the New Testament a visible and external priesthood… let him be anathema.” The Novus Ordo “presbyter” is a caricature of this dignity. St. Pius X, in Haerent Animo (1908), warned that the sanctity of the clergy is the first condition for the salvation of souls. The conciliar revolution destroyed the seminaries (replacing Thomism with personalism, asceticism with psychology), abolished the Traditional Latin Mass (the propitiatory sacrifice that obtains grace for chastity), and imposed the Novus Ordo (a lutheranized memorial centered on the “community”). The result is a clergy stripped of sacramental grace, delivered over to the flesh (Rom 1:24-27). LaPointe’s crime in the 1970s coincides precisely with the implosion of priestly discipline post-Sacrosanctum Concilium and the 1968 Instruction Sacerdotalis Caelibatus which opened the floodgates to dispensations and laxity. The “Lavender Mafia” networks, documented by honest investigators, found their fertile ground in the conciliar church’s refusal to condemn homosexuality (cf. the silence of the 1986 Letter to the Bishops vs. the clear teaching of Persona Humana 1975, itself already compromised).
Systemic Complicity: The Anti-Church Protects Its Own
The article mentions the “diocese” placed him on leave only when “allegations surfaced”—decades later. This is the standard operating procedure of the paramasonic structure: cover-up, transfer, silence, until secular power forces exposure. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864) condemns the proposition: “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41). Yet here, the State of Maryland executes the justice the “Church” abandoned. The “Attorney General” does the work the “Bishop of Norwich” failed to do. Why? Because the conciliar “bishops” are not true bishops. As demonstrated in the Defense of Sedevacantism file, a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum). The “bishops” of the Novus Ordo profess the heresies of Vatican II (religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality as a second subject of supreme power). They are intruders in the sheepfold (John 10:1). They have no jurisdiction to judge, bind, or loose. Their “canonical processes” are nullities. The Pope Paul IV Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio declares the promotion of a heretic “null, void, and of no effect.” The entire hierarchy of the anti-church is juridically non-existent. LaPointe’s “ministry leave” is a theatrical gesture by a void corporation.
The Antipope’s Theater: Leo XIV and the “Meeting with Victims”
The article appends a related link: “Pope Leo XIV to meet with abuse victims.” This is the antipope (Robert Prevost), the latest usurper of the See of Peter, performing the liturgical theater of the New Advent. Quas Primas (Pius XI) teaches: “Peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ… When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The anti-church, having dethroned Christ the King (by Dignitatis Humanae, Gaudium et Spes, the 1969 Missal), cannot produce justice. Its “meetings with victims” are public relations stunts to manufacture a facade of “transparency” and “compassion”—the cult of man replacing the cult of God. True justice requires canonical punishment (deposition, penance, excommunication), reparation to the Divine Majesty, and restoration of the True Mass and True Faith. The antipope offers sentimentalism; Christ the King demands holiness.
The Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Nowhere in the article—nor in the statements of the “diocese,” the “Attorney General,” or the “victim”—is there mention of: the state of grace, the sacrament of Penance, the Holy Eucharist, the reality of Hell, the Final Judgment, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, the need for prayer and penance. The crime is treated exclusively as a legal and psychological event. This radical naturalism is the essence of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) and Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Error 26). The conciliar sect has ceased to be a supernatural society; it is an NGO managing social dysfunction. LaPointe’s “guilty plea” is a civil contract, not an act of Catholic contrition. The “probation” is a secular restraint, not a canonical penance.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place
This case is not an “aberration.” It is the logical and necessary fruit of the conciliar apostasy. No True Mass → No Priestly Grace → No Chastity → No Justice. The “Diocese of Norwich,” the “Catholic News Agency,” the “Attorney General,” and “Leo XIV” are all actors in the Great Apostasy foretold by St. Paul (2 Thess 2:3) and Our Lady of Good Success (Quito, 1634—approved apparition, pre-1958). The True Church endures in the catacombs, among the faithful remnant adhering to the Traditional Latin Mass, the pre-1958 Magisterium, and bishops with valid orders and jurisdiction (e.g., Thuc line, Campos line). Only there is the Sacerdos Alter Christus found; only there is the Sacrifice of Calvary offered; only there is the grace of chastity obtained. Let the faithful flee the anti-church (Rev 18:4), reject its sacraments (idolatry/sacrilege), and cleave to the Tradition that cannot fail. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18)—but they have prevailed against the counterfeit church now manifest in Baltimore, Norwich, and Rome.
Source:
Catholic priest pleads guilty to 1970s sexual assault of Baltimore boy (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 05.11.2026