EWTN News reports that a “priest” of the “Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas,” one Richard Storey, has pleaded guilty to the felony theft of $160,000 from the parish of Curé of Ars in Leawood, squandering the faithful’s oblations on cruises, casino gambling, and international travel. The “archdiocese” announces a “canonical investigation” and mentions an additional “allegation involving an adult victim,” while the civil plea bargain recommends mere probation with a “substance abuse evaluation.” This sordid affair is not an isolated scandal but the inevitable fruit of a counterfeit priesthood severed from the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and the immutable moral law.
The Clinical Language of Apostasy: Bureaucracy Replaces Supernatural Justice
The very vocabulary of the “archdiocesan” statement betrays the naturalistic spirit of the conciliar sect. There is no mention of peccatum (sin), sacrilegium (sacrilege), or iudicium aeternum (eternal judgment). Instead, we read of a “severity level 7” offense, a “non-person, non-drug felony,” and a recommended “substance abuse evaluation.” This is the language of the secular courtroom, not the tribunal of the Church. The Codex Iuris Canonici of 1917, still binding on the true Church, treats the defection from the faith and the corruption of the clergy as matters of divine law, not administrative categories. Pius XII taught that the priest is alter Christus, and his fall drags souls into the abyss; the neo-church reduces this to a human resources dispute.
Canon 188.4 and the Automatic Vacancy of Office
The “Defense of Sedevacantism” source recalls Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration… if the cleric: 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” Fr. McDevitt and Ayrinhac confirm that public defection occurs through formal heresy or apostasy, regardless of affiliation with another religious community. A “priest” who steals from the altar to fund gambling junkets has publicly defected from the faith by his works, ex operibus, manifesting a heart devoid of the virtus religionis. By the very fact of his manifest impenitence and criminal abuse of ecclesiastical goods, he has vacated any office he might have held — not by a “canonical investigation,” but by divine law (ipso facto). The conciliar “canonical investigation” is a theater of the absurd, a procedural fig leaf to conceal the reality that the neo-church has no jurisdiction to judge, having itself defected from the faith at Vatican II.
The Theft of the Poor: A Cry to Heaven for Vengeance
The stolen $160,000 represented the oblata fidelium — the offerings of the faithful for the maintenance of divine worship and the relief of the poor. St. John Chrysostom thunders: “Not to share one’s goods with the poor is to steal from them and to deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” (Hom. in Laz. 2,5). The “priest” Storey converted these oblations into cruises and casino chips. This is not merely theft; it is sacrilegium in the strictest sense — the profanation of things consecrated to God. The “archdiocese” notes he “repaid just under $160,000” — as if restitution of the principal, likely from family or loans, erases the guilt before God. Non est satisfactio sine poena et conversione (There is no satisfaction without penalty and conversion). Where is the public penance? Where is the interdict? Where is the warning to the faithful that they have been shepherded by a wolf?
The “Adult Victim” Allegation: The Rot Runs Deeper
The “archdiocese” casually appends that it will investigate an “allegation involving an adult victim.” This bureaucratic euphemism — allegatio involvens victimam adultam — is the hallmark of the conciliar cover-up machinery. Since the “Dallas Charter” of 2002, the neo-church has perfected the art of managing scandal rather than rooting out vice. The “promoter of justice,” the “finance council’s audit committee,” the “archbishop” Shawn McKnight — these are functionaries of a paramasonic structure, not ministers of Christ’s justice. Pope St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu condemned the Modernist error that “the Church cannot, in any way, pass judgment on opinions concerning human abilities” (Prop. 5) and that “ecclesiastical judgments… prove that the faith of the Church is contrary to history” (Prop. 3). Today, the neo-church passes judgment only on financial irregularities, while the corruption of morals — the luxuria and avaritia of its “clergy” — is treated as a personnel matter.
The False Priesthood of the New Rite
Storey was “ordained” in the post-conciliar rite of Paul VI, a rite stripped of the essential form and intention for the sacerdotium. The traditional Pontifical, used for over a millennium, conveys the power to offer the Propitiatory Sacrifice and to forgive sins. The new rite speaks of “presiding over the assembly” and “building up the community.” A “priest” formed in the seminaries of the revolution, devoid of the sacerdos identity, inevitably becomes a functionary — and when the supernatural grace of orders is absent, the vacuum is filled by every vice. The “Defense of Sedevacantism” demonstrates that a manifest heretic cannot be Pope; a fortiori, a “bishop” who is a manifest modernist cannot validly ordain. The line of valid succession in the conciliar structures was broken by the new ordinal of 1968. Storey is a layman in vestments, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and his crimes are the logical consequence of a false priesthood.
Quas Primas: The Kingship of Christ Denied in Practice
Pius XI in Quas Primas declares: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” The “Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas” operates as a civil corporation, subject to secular law, its “canonical” processes subordinate to the state’s criminal justice system. The “priest” pleads guilty in a civil court; the “archbishop” awaits the “promoter of justice” to suggest “potential canonical actions.” This is the laicism condemned by Pius XI — the Church reduced to a department of the secular order, her ministers accountable to the state, not to God. The feast of Christ the King, instituted to combat this very plague, is ignored in the neo-church’s new calendar, moved to the end of the liturgical year to obscure its social kingship doctrine.
The Syllabus of Errors: The Neo-Church Condemns Itself
The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Error 19) and “The civil law prevails” in conflicting laws (Error 42). The Storey case is a textbook illustration. The “archdiocese” reports to the civil authorities, accepts the civil plea bargain (probation, “substance abuse evaluation”), and then conducts its own “investigation” as an afterthought. The Church’s own penal law — excommunication, deposition, interdict — is nowhere invoked. The neo-church has accepted the principle that the state is the supreme arbiter, even over the clergy. This is the liberalism condemned in Error 80: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The “archbishop” McKnight, a creature of the Bergoglian revolution, embodies this reconciliation.
Systemic Corruption: Not an Exception, But the Rule
This is not a “bad apple.” It is the fruit of the tree. The “related articles” listed by EWTN — “Priest charged with theft of $160,000 from Kansas…”, “Former finance director admits to stealing…” — reveal a pattern. The conciliar sect is awash in financial scandal, sexual predation, and doctrinal betrayal because it has severed itself from the fons vitae — the True Mass, the True Priesthood, the True Faith. St. Robert Bellarmine, cited in the “Defense of Sedevacantism,” teaches: “A manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The same principle applies to the entire hierarchy of the neo-church: having publicly defected from the faith at Vatican II (religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, new Mass), they have lost all jurisdiction. Their “canonical investigations” are null, their “absolutions” invalid, their “Masses” empty rituals.
The Only Remedy: Return to the Catacombs of Tradition
The faithful of Curé of Ars parish have been betrayed by a hireling. They will find no justice in the “archdiocesan” bureaucracy, only the whitewash of “transparency” and “accountability” — the buzzwords of the world. True justice demands the restoration of the Sacerdotium and the Imperium of Christ the King. Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia — but Peter is not in the Vatican occupied by the usurpers since 1958. The true Church persists in the catacombs of Tradition, where valid bishops and priests, holding fast to the Traditio of the Fathers and the Magisterium of Pius XII, offer the Unbloody Sacrifice and guard the deposit of faith. Let the faithful flee the conciliar structures — exite de medio eorum (2 Cor 6:17) — and seek the true pastors who feed the sheep with the Bread of Angels, not with the husks of the world.
Source:
Kansas City priest pleads guilty to $160,000 theft from parish (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 28.10.2026