Bill Donohue has finally mounted a defense of his BFF Cardinal Dolan, the burden of which is that it is phony to attack the guy for "inducing suspected miscreant priests to exit the priesthood while he was the Archbishop of Milwaukee" because his critics aren't really interested in how to handle sex abusers. If they were, quoth Donohue, they would also be criticizing all those examples of child-abusing government employees who are receiving their pensions.
Problem is, Dolan himself has repeatedly and vociferously denied that he did any such inducing, contrary to official admissions out of the Milwaukee archdiocese plus newly available documentary evidence. Which prompts the Church Lady in me to wonder who's inducing His Eminence to issue such denials. Could it be...Satan?
Whoever, there is a good case to be made that laicizing child-abusing priests is a bad idea that mostly serves the interest of an institutional church that doesn't want to be responsible for them anymore, i.e. subject to lawsuits for acts they commit after being defrocked. Better to keep them within the fold so as to be able to insure that they are assigned to places where they can be kept under control. Of course, there's also a case to be made that it's important for a church to be seen to be ridding itself of such bad actors, whose very continued existence as priests could be a cause of scandal.
Whether the Dolan regime in Milwaukee saw it that way is not, however, clear. According to one of the newly released status reports on Franklyn Becker, the laicized priest who we know received a $10,000 payment, Becker complained to an archdiocesan official that he was having trouble finding a job because a potential employer could go on the internet and find out about his past. "It probably even says that he has been laicized," the official, Deacon David L. Zimrich, reports him as saying. "I told him I knew the archdiocese wasn't advertising that he had been laicized and unless he told people I didn't think it was out there on the internet." Well, wasn't that special?
Later that year, Becker was seen going into a boys' locker room in the town where he lives and taking a look around.
Peter Isely | Jun 7, 2012 | 11:51am
If anyone deserves to be quoted in a Dolan story, it’s Groucho Marx, who once famously said: “Before I speak I have something important to say.” Everything important Dolan had to say about these payouts he said in the five days of silence before his silly harangue on Sunday against victims and the media. And, indeed, it speaks volumes that it has taken Bill Donahue a full week to weigh in, when the only thing he has yet to criticize as not being “anti-Catholic” about the New York Times is the type setting. As much as we survivors of childhood sexual assault by priests have struggled with Dolan, it’s reluctantly that we call him an outright liar. Yet, the evidence now shows that Dolan lied to the public in 2006 about paying off priest offenders for the purposes of laicization and he lied specifically that the Franklyn Becker payout was for charity. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee spokesman confirmed the first charge and internal church documents court ordered released from Becker’s file proves the later. You can try to defend the payouts but not even Donahue can defend the Cardinal lying to the Catholic people.
Peter Isely
SNAP Midwest Director
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judy.blockjones | Jun 7, 2012 | 11:59am
A NY bishop releases predators’ names—Dolan should do the same.
Statement by Mary Caplan, Mary Caplan, 917-439-4187, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
We welcome the Rochester Catholic bishop’s new move to protect children by releasing a list of predator priests. And we call on NYC’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan to stop stonewalling and do likewise.
This is the quickest and simplest way prelates can safeguard the vulnerable - posting on church websites the names of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics. It’s the very least any bishop should do. Parents, parishioners and the public should easily be able to learn about these potentially dangerous men who bishops recruited, educated, ordained, hired, trained, transferred and shielded.
Under intense pressure, Dolan did this in Milwaukee (though his list was far from complete or adequate). But he has refused to do so in New York. The time for excuses and delay is over. The time for openness and transparency is now.
Roughly 30 US bishops have released lists of predators in their dioceses. But now, America’s most prominent prelate refuses to do so.
According to BishopAccountability.org, there are 63 publicly accused NY archdiocesan priests. Some of them are no doubt deceased. But perhaps dozens now live and work among unsuspecting and vulnerable families. For the safety of kids, Dolan should stop hiding information - and start providing information - about them.
Read more here: http://rochesterhomepage.net/fulltext?nxd_id=323162
Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest Associate Director, 636-433-2511
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(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims.
SNAP was founded in 1988 and has more than 12,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers and increasingly, victims who were assaulted in a wide range of institutional settings like summer camps, athletic programs, Boy Scouts, etc. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org).
Carolyn Disco | Jun 7, 2012 | 2:32pm
I am so glad to see Mark Silk and Peter Isely laying out the facts that confirm the NY Times coverage of the Becker case. Exposing the disconnect between Dolan’s statements and what the formerly secret Milwaukee documents reveal is a huge service to the church.
Thank you to both for their diligence and courage. Becker personally admitted to Isely that the $10K payment was in exchange for his signing on the dotted line for laicization, NOT to cover insurance costs as a form of “charity” to the priest.
In addition, the documents show that “I (Deacon Zimrich) advised him that the archbishop was not going to pay for his bealIh insurance, either directly or by making some kind of financial arrangement.
“I explained that this decision was based on a very recent case coming out of Nashville. A former priest, now laicized, committed another offense of sexual misconduct.
“The victim filed a lawsuit against the diocese. The diocese claimed they had no responsibility since the man had been laicized. However, the court ruled against the diocese because the diocese continued to pay for the man’s health insurance after he was laicized.”
So, even after this outright refusal by Dolan to pay for Becker’s health insurance, Dolan blustered in the NYTimes about doing exactly that, out of “charity.” That in my mind is an unmistakable bald lie.