Head of Catholic Bishops Paid Pedophiles to Disappear

Subject: Re: Head of Catholic Bishops Paid Pedophiles to Disappear

The old Gospel song tells us, "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me". 

But who or what watches God?  Power corrupts, and total power corrupts totally. 

But God has no review board, no citizens advisory council, no oversight committee.  God is absolute power.  According to God, He created the Universe and all that is in it.  So where is the scientific proof of such a bold claim?  Why, it's in His Word.  He has handed down His word.  Never mind that it is somewhat different in different books, depending upon your Faith. 

The Catholic Church, and most religions, believe that God and His Church are above Man's Laws.  The Church answers only to God.  And who tells us what God says on any given subject?  Why it's His Church that tells us. 

Sound familiar?  It's called circular thinking.  No wonder we Americans go about in such a state of confusion!  Our American Empire Masters have used God's circular thinking in order to sell us their own line of bullshit. 

God tells us He is all powerful and He never lies.  Who can prove it?  Our American Empire Masters tell us that we are fortunate to live in history's most powerful Empire, and we believe them because they are the most powerful force on Earth, and therefore they cannot be lying. 

And yet, just as with the mighty Church, our Empire is crumbling.  More of our citizens are suffering.  Even as we are asked to sing praises to the Mighty Empire, we are being stripped of what little wealth we still possess. 

And God is calling us to sing His praises and to pledge all we have to His Church, even as billions of His children are facing starvation, murder, slavery and worse.  But just as with the American Empire, God promises better times ahead.  And who can verify His claim that there is a Heaven waiting for us? 

And who has been to the Promised Land of the American Empire? 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

Head of Catholic Bishops Paid Pedophiles to Disappear
Thursday, 31 May 2012 12:42 By Valerie Tarico, Truthout | News Analysis



Head of Catholic Bishops Paid Pedophiles to Disappear
Thursday, 31 May 2012 12:42 By Valerie Tarico, Truthout | News Analysis

Timothy Dolan. (Photo: Cy White / Flickr)Timothy Dolan, cardinal of New York
and head of the Catholic Conference of Bishops, had his prime-time career
launched by the pedophile priest scandal. Now, despite efforts to distance
himself, his role in pedophile protection may come back to bite him.
Wednesday, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee admitted that, during Dolan's
tenure, pedophiles were paid to simply disappear.
 
In June of 2002, Dolan was appointed archbishop of Milwaukee after his
predecessor, Rembert G. Weakland, admitted a confidential settlement of
$450,000 to a man who accused Weakland of sexually assaulting him in 1979.
In contrast to Weakland, Dolan was a known theological conservative with the
trust of the Vatican and, despite questionable management of sexual abuse
scandals in his previous position in Saint Louis, he was tasked with
cleaning up the mess.
 
From the start, Dolan positioned himself as a victim's advocate: "... [i]t
is impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the situation, and the suffering
that victims feel, because I've spent the last four months being with them,
crying with them, having them express their anger to me." His response to
those tears and anger, however, foreshadowed events of this winter, when
Dolan had consistently argued that the church is above the law.
 
In the case of the pedophile priests, Dolan almost immediately set about
exploring financial incentives that would encourage them to step down and
fade away into the community. He emphatically denied in 2006 that this was
the case. But during subsequent bankruptcy proceedings for the Milwaukee
archdiocese, public documents showed that Dolan had discussed payout options
with his finance committee as early as 2003. Now email from Julie Wolf,
communications director for the archdiocese, confirms that pedophiles were
paid up to $20,000 apiece in exchange for quietly relinquishing their
positions in the church.
 
Peter Isely is Midwest director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those
Abused by Priests, and a resident of Milwaukee. Isely expressed outrage at
the newly confirmed payoffs, which his organization has long alleged despite
Dolan's denial. "This is as ludicrous as a school board, instead of firing a
teacher for criminal acts against children, calling the police and revoking
his license to teach, instead saying that they had to pay the child molester
tens of thousands of dollars to hand over their license to the board."
 
In 2006, serial molester Father Franklyn Becker admitted that he had been
paid $10,000 for signing "laicization papers" renouncing priesthood. At the
time, Dolan insisted that the payment was to cover health care expenses.
"For anyone to assert that this money was a 'payoff' or occurred in exchange
for Becker agreeing to leave the priesthood is completely false,
preposterous and unjust." Minutes from the 2003 Finance Committee meeting
suggest otherwise. Payouts to pedophiles like Becker were to be on top of
pension, salary and health care benefits, and had no strings attached.
 
Since moving to New York and taking over leadership of the Catholic Council
of Bishops, Dolan has leveraged his position to advance a set of priorities
based on conservative theology, anti-reproductive rights and anti-gay rights
in particular. He has been a vocal and visible opponent of comprehensive
health care access and marriage equality, arguing, essentially, that
religious freedom operates at the level of institutions and trumps civil
rights law. His position as cardinal gains him not only the ear of the
Catholic laity, but of the White House. Last November, for example, a
meeting between Dolan and Obama was described as "one among many meetings
with officials from the Catholic Church and the administration."
 
In this fight, Dolan has had a strong ally in Bill Donohue of the Catholic
League. Like Dolan, Donohue appears more concerned with protecting the
Catholic church than past and future abuse victims. In March, Donohue said
that the Catholic church had been too easy on victims, "too quick to write a
check," and should instead "fight them one by one." In 2011, Dolan thanked
Donohue for a press release that, among other things, called SNAP a "phony
victims group." In January, he scorned a gathering of victims and advocates
in Boston as "the professional victims lobby" and "a pitiful bunch of
malcontents."
 
Like Dolan, Donohue is a staunch Vatican loyalist, who has played a fierce
and vocal role in what are being called the Vagina Wars. He launched a
boycott of "The Jon Stewart Show" after Stewart displayed an image of a
manger blocking a vagina that the League called hate speech. Delta Airlines
compliantly pulled their advertising. Donohue's professions of horror at the
image are matched only by the "horror" that Dolan expressed at the
"strangling nature" of Obama's narrow contraceptive exemption for Catholic
churches.
 
But will the Vagina Wars be sufficient distraction from Dolan's history of
enabling abusers? That remains to be seen. In a 2011 "60 Minutes" interview,
Dolan himself said that the abuse scandal needs to haunt the church for some
time to come. Perhaps, he should watch what he asks for.