Articles appearing in Northeastern Pennsylvania newspapers over the past few days as well as an announcement on the Diocese of Scranton web site confirm that the Vatican has defrocked Father Edward J. Shoback.
Read the stories at:
The Scranton Times Tribune
The Citizens Voice
The Times Leader
Abuse Tracker (where all the coverage is documented)
Sixteen other priests are identified as credibly accused from the Diocese of Scranton. They are listed at Bishop Accountability.com . There are others that have been protected by the Diocese that may very well still be abusing children in parishes across Northeast Pennsylvania.
At some point the parishioners of the Diocese of Scranton need to stand up and demand that the Bishop open Diocesan records and notify all the parishes that have had pedophile priests assigned of the credible allegations against these monsters. If Bishop Martino is not willing to do this, he should resign. The U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the District Attorneys for the juristidictions touched by the Diocese of Scranton should start investigations not only into the activities of the pedophile priests that have preyed on children and vulnerable adults in the churches, rectories, summer camps and schools run by the Dioceses but into the actions of the Bishops and their minions to protect these “men”. Those actions amount to an ongoing criminal conspiracy that put children at risk, used parishioner donations to support the men who should have been handed over to civil authority for prosecution, and covered up their activities. They have spent millions on settlements, lawyers and public relations campaigns used to isolate victims and give the impression that there have only been a handful of allegations against a very small number of priests. This is a lie, of course.
It is time to march on the Chancery in Scranton and let Bishop Martino know his days of protecting pedophiles are over.
Off My Knees - A Blog by Michael Baumann 
Did anyone notice an article in the Scranton Times about the lack of donations to the Bishop’s Appeal? Might the lack of financial support be related to how masterfully the Scranton Diocese considers itself the moral authority and above the law? My Jesuit education taught me that moral authority is derived from following laws not evading them.
I find it interesting that the Scranton Diocese has instituted a novena for an increase in priestly vocations before each mass. Perhaps the Diocese should change its weekly novena to that of a novena for the atonement of the criminal wrongs committed by its pedophile priests as well as those priests and religious who looked the other way.
Thank you for this. I wish this son of a bitch got more coverage and was thrown in prison or beat half to death after all of his misconduct. I was a parishioner and alter boy (as well as my brother) from 1996 until about 2003 when I went to college. My brother stayed on for another year or two after the allegations surfaced.
He would rant and rave about how the priests wh oput their hands on kids should be prosecuted, excommunicated, etc. But when his stories came out everyone was so enraged that he was such a hypocrite. This is the same guy who told me I was going to Hell because I had tattoos and had premarital sex. With every ounce of my being I hate this man.
Shoback ruined my life. He should be in prison for the things he did to young boys, me included. I wish I could state my true feelings, but I would then probably be in prison myself.