Cadinal Dolan wants priests to give until it hurts – God, how it hurts those kids
In June, 2012, Monsignor William Lynn, chief of priest operating in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, was found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child by covering up child sex abuse in the US Catholic Church. Forget the kids. He wanted to protect the Church.
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth William told media:
“This is a monumental victory for the named and un-named victims. This was about evil men who did evil things to children.”
His brief, Jeff Lindy, added:
“He’s really upset. He’s upset, he’s crushed. He didn’t want anything other than to help kids, he’s crushed about this.”
Lynn’s line manager was Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. He died in January 2012. Lynn claimed Bevilacqua told him that “any mention of an accused priest’s move from a parish should cite health reasons, never the accusations.” Lynn had compiled a list of suspected peadophile priests. Bevilacqua, apparently, ordered copies to be destroyed. But one was found.
Mindful of this, we turn to the twitter feed to His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, annointed by Pope Benedict XVI on February 23, 2009. He tweets:
Lets admit it, every once in awhile we get discouraged and a little down. We get fatigued. But St Paul tells us “Never tire of doing good!”
“I sympathise. Paying off child molesting priests must take a lot out of you”
Nathaniel Brooks reported this for The New York Times in May 2012:
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee.
Questioned at the time about the news that one particularly notorious pedophile cleric had been given a “payoff” to leave the priesthood, Cardinal Dolan, then the archbishop, responded that such an inference was “false, preposterous and unjust.”
But a document unearthed during bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and made public by victims’ advocates reveals that the archdiocese did make such payments to multiple accused priests to encourage them to seek dismissal, thereby allowing the church to remove them from the payroll.
A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed on Wednesday that payments of as much as $20,000 were made to “a handful” of accused priests “as a motivation” not to contest being defrocked. The process, known as “laicization,” is a formal church juridical procedure that requires Vatican approval, and can take far longer if the priest objects.
Do-gooders. The lot of them…
Posted: 25th, June 2012 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
