The extreme low standards of the voters of Time Magazine’s “The 2012 TIME 100”, making Cardinal Timothy Dolan #1
The 100 Most Influential People in the World
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2111975_2111976_2111989,00.html
Dolan became Archbishop of Milwaukee after Archbishop Weakland was discovered having an unspecified encounter with a younger male and paid out $450,000 to avoid a significant lawsuit. Dolan’s reception in Milwaukee got a lift from the scandal, the notion being, we can celebrate this new one, and cover up whatever the last one did (Weakland apparently stole that $450,000 from the Church).
As Archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy Dolan successfully fought proposed legislation that would have lifted the statute of limitations for the prosecution of child rape crimes. New York legislators have proposed lifting the statute of limitations on child rape. But a staffer for Senator Thomas Duane told me that if I thought Dolan fought hard against marriage equality, I should know that that is nothing compared to how hard he fights against lifting the statute of limitations for the prosecution of child rapes.
There are accusations of fiscal impropriety and laxity in the context of sexual abuse cases in the Diocese of Milwaukee where Dolan served as archbishop between 2002 and 2009.
~Milwaukee Church Sexual Abuse
Milwaukee Archdiocese faces 550 sex abuse claims
MILWAUKEE - About 550 people are asking for restitution for alleged sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee — more than in any of the other U.S. dioceses that have filed for bankruptcy protection, according to a lawyer involved in the Milwaukee case.
The Milwaukee Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection last year, saying pending sex-abuse lawsuits could leave it with debts it couldn’t afford.
The archdiocese has paid more than $30 million in settlements and other court costs related to allegations of clergy abuse and more than a dozen suits against it have been halted because of the bankruptcy proceedings. One priest alone is accused of abusing some 200 boys at a suburban school for deaf students from 1950 to 1974.
James Stang, a bankruptcy lawyer who represents creditors in the Wisconsin case, estimated that about 550 claims had been filed by the Wednesday afternoon deadline set by the bankruptcy court.
Those who filed claims will end up splitting a settlement amount that will be determined by the creditors’ committee, archdiocese and its insurance company. The archdiocese had only $4.6 million in assets to be applied to claims in 2010.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57370183/milwaukee-archdiocese-faces-550-sex-abuse-claims/
8,000 new instances of child sexual abuse alleged in Milwaukee Archdiocese
The bankruptcy hearings for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee have revealed more than 8,000 previously unreported instances of alleged sexual abuse of children, according to one attorney representing the victims. The charges cover a span of 60 years and implicate a group of 100 alleged offenders, including nuns, church workers and some 75 priests.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Annysa Johnson writes that 570 “victim-survivors” have filed claims in the case, which is currently before U.S. bankruptcy judge Susan V. Kelley.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/10/8000-new-instances-of-child-sexual-abuse-alleged-in-milwaukee-archdiocese/
800 pages of Documents released Thursday detailed a Catholic Church cover-up of a sexually abusive Milwaukee priest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDNUKNu53rc
Many believe Dolan did not do enough in the wake of the scandal, of being slow to make documentation available to court officers, of releasing the name of a clerical abuse victim who had confided in him — without that victim’s consent — and of failing to make public the names of some offending priests. Dolan is also accused of moving money around in order to prevent it from being seized by the courts in sexual assault and child rape cases.
At least in part, for successfully shielding Catholic Church resources against claims from Church sex abuse victims, Archbishop Dolan has been “elevated” to Cardinal.
Archdiocese accused of moving funds.
It says $75 million transfer is not an effort to shield assets.
An attorney for victims of clergy sex abuse suggested Friday that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee moved as much as $75 million off its books over the last six years in an effort to shield it from sex abuse settlements - allegations denied by the archdiocese.
Attorney Jeffrey Anderson of St. Paul implied the archdiocese engaged in a shell game during a bankruptcy hearing before Assistant U.S. Trustee David Asbach.
Anderson questioned archdiocese chief financial officer John Marek about the whereabouts of a $75 million account that last appeared on the archdiocese’s audited annual financial statements in 2003-‘04. And he questioned the transfer of a separate $55 million into a newly created cemetery trust in 2008, a year after the Wisconsin Supreme Court opened the door for victims to sue the archdiocese for fraud.
Marek, who was hired by the archdiocese in 2007, could not answer questions about the $75 million. He said the cemetery funds had previously been in an account under the control of the archbishop but had always been “treated as a trust.”
“We have serious questions about what we’ve seen and heard today,” Anderson said after the hearing at the federal courthouse. He vowed to depose current and past bishops, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, in an effort to get answers.
http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/116026364.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/archbishop_dolan_funds_be_deposed_SNRSRNABYFy20Jm33cn39O
NY Archbishop Calls ‘Ludicrous’ Claims His Ex-Diocese Hid Money
Lawyer claims Milwaukee church hid millions from sex abuse claimants
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan blasted as “ludicrous” an attorney’s claim that his former diocese in Milwaukee moved $130 million to avoid paying sex abuse settlements.
Dolan had run the Milwaukee Archdiocese for seven years before becoming the leader of New York’s two million Catholics in 2009.
“To think there was $130 million in hidden funds, like Dolan’s got some off-shore account in the Cayman Islands or something,” Dolan said after mass Sunday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. ”This is just ludicrous. But I’m also saddened because darn it, I think the archdiocese has done a good job, and Lord knows, I worked my hardest.”
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/NY-Archbishop-To—116108739.html
NYC Officials Fear Of Archbishop Dolan Impedes Justice For Church Abuse Victims
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/nyc-officials-fear-of-archbishop-dolan-impedes-justice-for-church-abuse-victims/politics/2012/01/12/33000
Archbishop Dolan Bashes Church Rape Victims
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/archbishop-dolan-bashes-church-rape-victims/news/2012/01/09/32869
Victims Of Pedophile Priests Are “Pitiful Malcontents” Says Catholic League
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/victims-of-pedophile-priests-are-pitiful-malcontents-says-catholic-league/politics/2012/01/09/32957
In 2011, Dolan thanked Bill Donohue for a press release, reproduced on the Archdiocese of New York website, in which Donahue referred to the non-profit support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests a “phony victims’ group”.
As an auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop, Dolan was criticized for his handling of Roman Catholic priests accused of sexual misconduct, accused of being on a “witch hunt” to dismiss abusive priests.
Dolan testified in Senate to block legislation that would temporarily extend the grace period for adults filing child sexual assault charges against priests.
Timothy Dolan: God’s “Beabull”
http://www.indietheology.com/2012/02/timothy-dolan-gods-beabull.html
On the Archbishop’s Blog with a photo of Dolan smiling, and a headline of “Gratitude to the Catholic League” — Dolan published a press release from the Catholic League’s notorious political gay basher Bill Donahue.
Donahue wrote that the apparent victim had reported to work three days after as the abuse was occurring and now says that she was abused. He repeats the pattern several times, to emphasize his point that the girl went to work but “now says” that she was abused. What is wrong with his statements? They are the kind of thing that institutional sexual abusers and their administrative protectors use to intimidate other victims out of coming forward. “Nobody will believe you,” is one of the sex abuser’s preferred lines, according to abuse experts.
Under the photo of Dolan’s smiling face, on Dolan’s blog, Donahue goes on to call the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) a “phony victims’ group.”
Anybody with knowledge of the situation knows that minus SNAP, the Catholic Church would have done the equivalent of saying that all Church child rape victims “didn’t protest to getting a massage” and had been “wearing short skirts.” In recent weeks, Donahue has said that Church child rape victims “don’t want to move on, and that’s because they have too much invested in maintaining their victim status.”
New York Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan says the church sex abuse scandal “belongs to all of us” and praises the church’s response to the crisis.
(Child sexual abuse) “Nobody has confronted it better than the Catholic church!” ~Timothy Dolan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNASNEkO0pA
Court case official documents:
Table of contents
http://documents.nytimes.com/anatomy-of-an-abuse-complaint-3
Complete PDF
http://s3.amazonaws.com/nytdocs/docs/329/329.pdf
Complex Struggle: Prelate’s Record in Abuse Crisis
In 2002, at the height of the sexual abuse crisis confronting theRoman Catholic Church in America, Timothy M. Dolan arrived in Milwaukee as the new archbishop, succeeding a prelate who had been caught up in scandal. To abuse victims who had felt rebuffed by the church, Archbishop Dolan — warm, down to earth — seemed a bright beam of hope.
He listened to them, wept with them and vowed to change the way the archdiocese dealt with the molestation of children by priests. But just months later, he handwrote a letter to Peter Isely, a victim and an advocate whose wife worried that the new archbishop would let him down.
“Listen to her,” Archbishop Dolan wrote. “Do not put your trust in me. You often speak eloquently about your own imperfection and sin. I’m in the same boat. I am imperfect, sinful, struggling, clumsy.”
His message was to trust only in God. And his warning proved accurate: He would disappoint many victims.
Days before the letter, they learned that Archbishop Dolan had instructed lawyers to seek the dismissal of five lawsuits against the church. Over the next six years, advocates would lament that he resisted many of their appeals for change, from opening church records on predatory priests to offering victims more comprehensive help.
Archbishop Dolan of Milwaukee is now Archbishop Dolan of New York, one of the church’s most visible leaders. As the scandal has reignited in recent months, focusing scrutiny on bishops from Ireland to India, he has used his influential post to defend Pope Benedict XVI from criticism that he was slow to move against priests.
The archbishop himself has struggled with the crisis during the decade since it struck the church in America with startling force. While sexual abuse has not confronted him as a major issue in New York, it loomed large in Milwaukee and in his previous assignment as a bishop in St. Louis. And a close look at his record there, largely unexamined since his arrival in New York about a year ago, shows how he tried — not always successfully — to accommodate competing demands.
One of a generation of bishops who came to the job after many of their predecessors were discredited, Archbishop Dolan faced a daunting set of challenges: assuaging not only abuse victims but also a church hierarchy worried about ruinous damages awards, parishioners angry over payments to victims, and his own priests, some perhaps falsely accused. It was a diplomatic gantlet many recent bishops have had to walk, and Archbishop Dolan trod it with particular care.
A genial conciliator, he consoled victims and created a fund to pay for compensation and counseling. He helped remove a dozen priests from ministry and disclosed the names of dozens more.
“He changed our experience in Milwaukee,” said Ralph Leese, 58, who received a financial settlement for his repeated abuse by a priest. “He made you feel like he knew where you were coming from, almost like the abuse had happened to him.”
But like bishops before him, the archbishop was also a tough defender of the church’s interests, clergy and bank balances. In Milwaukee, he worked in an unusually public and personal way to limit lawsuits and settlements. He declined to post the names of abusive priests who belonged to religious orders, though some other bishops have done so.
And in one St. Louis case, records show, he swiftly took the side of a priest who then sued his accuser with the archdiocese’s help, though church officials had not made a detailed investigation of the complaint.
In interviews and written responses for this article, Archbishop Dolan, 60, has discussed his handling of the abuse crisis at length. He expressed impatience with Mr. Isely’s group — Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP — which, he said, could be impossible to please. The group, he said, was one of many forces pressing him, including Catholics who wanted no acknowledgment of the sex abuse problem.
“I kept saying, ‘We need to talk about this. We need to wrestle with this,’ ” he said. “They kept saying, ‘Would you quit talking about it?’ ”
The archbishop said the church had done more than any other organization to prevent future molestation. But he also acknowledged missteps as he and other church leaders struggled to address a growing scandal.
“This is a work in progress, and we’re learning as we go along,” he said. “That’s why perhaps you’ve heard me say, go ahead and criticize. We are just like everybody else that’s dealing with this painful issue — families, Boy Scouts, every other religion.”
‘I Found Myself Convinced’
The young man on the phone was distraught. The Archdiocese of St. Louis had appealed to people molested by priests to seek healing from the church. And in March 2002, the man, Arthur P. Andreas, called the auxiliary bishop handling abuse complaints: Timothy Dolan.
Mr. Andreas told Bishop Dolan he had been abused in the late 1980s, while in his early teens and living at St. Joseph’s Home for Boys, a Catholic center for troubled youth. He said a chaplain had groped him during three sleepovers in the clergyman’s quarters. Mr. Andreas told church officials he did not want his identity revealed, yet he hoped to get the secret off his chest and spare others similar mistreatment.
Bishop Dolan suggested they meet, but Mr. Andreas suspected that the bishop might try to talk him into dropping his complaint. Instead, he hired a lawyer and later detailed his allegations in writing to church officials and in person to prosecutors.
Mr. Andreas and the bishop never would meet, and the merits of his complaint would remain unclear. But his case, and his name, would spill into public view.
Bishop Dolan had little experience handling such cases, having been named the archdiocese’s point man for abuse complaints a month earlier, after about seven years in Rome. Born in St. Louis, he graduated from its local seminaries and knew many of its priests, including the accused chaplain, the Rev. Alexander R. Anderson.
Those connections, and what Bishop Dolan called “a tsunami” of abuse allegations, made the job excruciating. In an interview, he recalled “having to call these brother priests and confront them with accusations and tell them that they are out of the priesthood, and go to the parishes and tell that to the people.” He helped remove eight St. Louis priests from ministry, including two who lived in a rectory with him.
This new complaint, however, posed a different challenge. In most cases, the accused priests confessed. Father Anderson protested his innocence.
Meeting with the bishop about a week after Mr. Andreas called, Father Anderson acknowledged that during summers at St. Joseph’s, he had invited boys to sleep in his study because it was air-conditioned. But he firmly denied Mr. Andreas’s accusations.
Bishop Dolan, who said he had checked the priest’s personnel files and found no hint of a problem, was convinced on the spot.
“He said it with a lot of peace,” the bishop recalled in a 2003 deposition provided to The New York Times by David Clohessy, the executive director of SNAP. “I found myself convinced because of his — his tranquillity, his serenity and, I also have to say, because of his reputation.”
Bishop Dolan headed a review board — including priests, mental health professionals and other lay people — that helped evaluate abuse complaints. The same day that he met with the priest, he reviewed the allegations with three members and Archbishop Justin Rigali, and gave his opinion: Father Anderson was telling the truth.
The panel did not have investigators or subpoena power, Bishop Dolan said, but reviewed information provided by church officials and accusers. After several weeks, there was not much. The bishop said he had phoned a nun and a former nun who once worked at the boys’ home. They praised the priest and described Mr. Andreas as troubled, like the other boys, and thus prone to lie.
There is no evidence that during this time the archdiocese sought witnesses to any abuse; Bishop Dolan later testified that he was unaware of an earlier abuse complaint against Father Anderson that had been withdrawn.
The archdiocese decided that Mr. Andreas’s allegations were not credible, and said it passed them to the St. Louis circuit attorney in April 2002 at the urging of Father Anderson. “We thought, ‘Good, they’re going to look into this with a fine-tooth comb,’ ” Bishop Dolan recalled in his deposition.
But the criminal statute of limitations on the complaint would expire in two months, when Mr. Andreas turned 28. The church, in the meantime, went on the offensive.
Out in the Open
At weekend Masses in his parish in Eureka, Mo., a day after the archdiocese contacted prosecutors, Father Anderson announced he was the subject of a false abuse complaint. Archbishop Rigali issued a news release supporting him.
Father Anderson wanted more: permission to sue his accuser for defamation, as few priests had done. He wrote to Bishop Dolan, urging him to obtain the archbishop’s consent before the statute of limitations lapsed “so it wouldn’t appear that we were waiting until the young man’s hands were tied before we made a move against him.” Father Anderson wrote that the suit would ask Mr. Andreas to withdraw his allegations and to make a public apology, which the priest and the archdiocese could use “to our best advantage.”
Bishop Dolan said in his deposition that he had cautioned Father Anderson to consider the pain a lawsuit could cause. In an internal memo, he urged Archbishop Rigali to decide before the statute ran out, saying the “suit would of course lose force” after that.
The archbishop allowed the lawsuit. Records show that the archdiocese agreed to pay the priest’s legal bills but deleted a reference to it in correspondence, concerned about public criticism of its spending for accused priests.
Father Anderson filed suit in July 2002, a month after the statute expired and prosecutors said they would file no charges. News reports on the suit identified Mr. Andreas as the accuser.
Bishop Dolan was in the news, too, having been named archbishop of Milwaukee.
In his deposition the following year, he recalled that prosecutors had found the allegations against Father Anderson untrue. But Ed Postawko, then chief of the circuit attorney’s child sex abuse unit, said recently that the main obstacles to pursuing the case were the limited time and the difficulty locating witnesses and persuading them to come forward. “These cases can be quite complex to investigate,” he said.
Mr. Andreas countersued Father Anderson, and in 2004, both men dropped their lawsuits in a deal in which the archdiocese paid $22,500 for Mr. Andreas’s counseling — a settlement in which the church admitted no wrongdoing.
The truth in the case grew even more elusive. Litigation unearthed Mr. Andreas’s childhood psychiatric records, which reported tendencies to lie and to blame others. In 2004, after Archbishop Dolan had left St. Louis, another man claimed that Father Anderson had abused him at the boys’ home, but church officials found the complaint not credible.
Today, Father Anderson is pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in De Soto, Mo. He declined to be interviewed.
Mr. Andreas, who now has a sales job, said he regretted going to the archdiocese. “I would have never made the call if I knew that they would take something so painful to me and put it on everyone’s breakfast table,” he said.
Archbishop Dolan said he believed he had handled the case properly, though he said in some ways he would act differently now that the nation’s bishops have set new rules for dealing with complaints. He said he would not offer his opinion to a review board and would not sit on the panel, which he said must be “scrupulously independent.” He said he now knew that abusive priests could be deceptive, and that he should not “trust my gut.”
“One thing I’ve learned is, well, they can speak their piece,” he said. “I cannot give this credibility. It’s not up to me.”
From Hugs to Hard Feelings
On an October evening in 2002, about eight weeks after arriving in Milwaukee, Archbishop Dolan and other church officials sat down with an estimated 200 people — abuse victims, their families and supporters — in an extraordinary public forum. For four hours, as they told their stories, the archbishop listened intently, wiping his eyes and leaping up to embrace the last speaker.
“We can’t do business as usual,” he said. “That’s sledgehammer obvious to me this evening.”
Many in the crowd had felt marginalized by his predecessor, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, who had resigned after admitting that the archdiocese had paid $450,000 to a younger man with whom he had carried on an affair.
Now, they believed they could persuade the archdiocese to make an array of changes: publicly naming predatory priests; censuring church officials who may have covered up abuse; establishing an independent system to mediate abuse claims; and paying victims adequate compensation.
Archbishop Dolan would grant some of their requests. He met with victims to offer apologies and consolation. After the nation’s bishops required each diocese to appoint a coordinator of assistance to alleged victims, he went further, hiring a non-Catholic to work full time.
Yet he and SNAP, the group representing most victims, soon tangled in an escalating series of battles. One sticking point would be money.
The archbishop said that while he was ready to help victims financially, he would not tap donations that parishioners and others had intended for schools or charities, “to compensate for the sinful actions of a few in which they had no part and which they roundly condemn.” He announced he was creating a $4 million fund for settlements, to be raised by selling church property.
The archdiocese had a special immunity. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that church-and-state separation barred lawsuits against religious organizations for negligent supervision of clergy. As in most states, the statute of limitations ruled out suits for abuse that had occurred many years earlier.
Yet church officials, saying they wanted to do justice, had long been meeting with individual victims to settle complaints. Archbishop Dolan commissioned a new system using mediators independent of the church.
SNAP, in turn, pushed for a group process in which church officials and dozens of victims would mediate claims together — a move it hoped would make settlements more equitable and lend individuals more leverage. Archbishop Dolan expressed support, and in December 2003, the two sides began to discuss that and other proposals.
Three months into the talks, the advocates walked out, saying the church had made non-negotiable demands; among them, that mediation would not include the victims of priests who belonged to religious orders like the Jesuits or Capuchins, and that victims would not have final say over how to divide settlement money.
Mr. Isely said that without the ability to sue, his group had no bargaining power, but relied on the church’s good faith. “And if that good faith was broken,” he added, “there was literally nothing we could do.”
The archbishop said he did not know why the advocates withdrew. But the archdiocese continued to negotiate with victims one by one. Under Archbishop Dolan, the independent mediation he set up reached resolution with more than 170 victims, paying about $10.2 million for settlements, therapy and other assistance.
Results varied widely. Mike Sneesby, 53, said he was abused by a parish priest over a four-year period starting when he was 12, and received $125,000. Gary Smith, one among scores of boys abused by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a Wisconsin school for the deaf, was not allowed into mediation because he accepted $5,000 in 1994, two years before Archbishop Weakland began writing to the Vatican for guidance on how to move against the priest.
Patrick W. Carey, a professor of theology at Marquette University who sits on an archdiocesan panel on religious education, said the settlement fund helped limit the church’s fiscal exposure. “Financially, it made a lot of sense,” if only for a time, Professor Carey said. “It was an impossible situation.”
The archdiocese was less protected in California, where two abusive priests it allowed to take new posts in the 1970s had molested more children. Its lawyers fought unsuccessfully to avoid liability in 10 abuse claims, and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. Archbishop Dolan flew to Los Angeles in 2006, at the recommendation of a judge, for negotiations that resulted in a $16.5 million settlement.
In Wisconsin, a new threat arose: a bill that would open a three-year grace period in which people could sue the church for abuse no matter how long ago it occurred. For years the church had successfully opposed similar proposals, but in 2008, a new measure had broad support. Archbishop Dolan went before a State Senate committee — a rare appearance by an American archbishop before a legislative body.
“There is no Catholic Superfund that can provide the monies this legislation will require of the church,” he testified. The bill did not emerge from committee.
Today, the archdiocese faces another hurdle. The Wisconsin Supreme Court, which had limited lawsuits against the church, ruled in 2007 that the archdiocese could be sued for fraud by plaintiffs claiming that it had placed abusive priests in new parishes without alerting parishioners. The archdiocese says it now faces 12 fraud suits in that state.
In New York, Archbishop Dolan has kept a much lower profile on sexual abuse. When a bill similar to Wisconsin’s surfaced in the State Legislature last year, other bishops led the opposition. The archbishop said the policies he inherited at the archdiocese, which has not had a mediation program, seemed sufficient. He has faced few calls for change from victims, though SNAP members traveled from Milwaukee to New York to protest his appointment.
The archbishop said he had come to regret his early overtures to the group.
At one parish visit in Milwaukee, he recalled, “a SNAP member spat in my face and yelled that he would not rest until there was a ‘going out of business’ sign in front of every Catholic parish, church, school and outreach center.”
He added, “That’s when I knew I should have listened to those who told me that working with them would not be helpful.”
Mr. Isely, the Midwest director of SNAP, said he was not aware of the incident, but if a member had acted that way, the group would apologize to the archbishop.
Many victims say their own persistence prompted the archbishop to make many of the changes that he did. Amy Peterson, whom he hired to coordinate assistance to victims, agreed. “I credit the survivors for the changes within the archdiocese,” said Ms. Peterson, who still holds the job. “Not the archdiocese alone.”
Naming Names
Even after talks with SNAP fell apart, Archbishop Dolan moved ahead on one of its priorities. In July 2004, he released the names of predatory priests in Milwaukee. The list, still posted online, names 43, living and dead. Only two dozen of the nation’s 195 dioceses have done so, according to the group BishopAccountability.org.
The archbishop recalled that the decision to make the names public was “very difficult” because many Catholics advised against it. “In retrospect,” he said, “I’m glad I did.”
But he has not done the same in New York, where the archdiocese has published each name in its newspaper once, when a priest is removed from ministry. In Milwaukee, many victims say he acted only after public pressure from them, the governor, senior state lawmakers and some members of his own community advisory board on sex abuse.
The list itself, they add, is incomplete. It includes only archdiocesan priests and omits those who belong to religious orders, though the latter constitute more than half the 704 priests in the archdiocese. SNAP says 26 religious-order priests in the archdiocese have abused children, but their orders have not identified them publicly.
Like most dioceses, Milwaukee has extensive ties to religious-order priests. Those who work in parishes need an appointment by the archbishop. The archdiocese sends its seminarians for their academic requirements to a theology school run by the Priests of the Sacred Heart. One of its two auxiliary bishops is a Conventual Franciscan.
Yet, under a longtime policy, the archdiocese does not investigate abuse allegations against such priests, but refers them to the leaders of their orders. By law, it forwards complaints to the authorities.
Archbishop Dolan has said church law bars him from publicly identifying religious-order priests who have abused children.
In interviews, a half-dozen canon law experts — including Msgr. Thomas J. Green, a professor at Catholic University — said the law did not specifically address the release of names.
Fourteen dioceses, including Baltimore and Los Angeles, that have listed abusive priests have included members of religious orders, according to BishopAccountability.org. Many, like the Diocese of Springfield, Mass., have investigated allegations against such priests and helped pay settlements.
Baltimore’s list includes a religious-order priest, the Rev. Dennis Pecore, who abused a child there in the 1970s before he was transferred to Milwaukee, where he was twice convicted of sexual offenses against children. The Milwaukee archdiocese joined with Father Pecore’s religious order, the Salvatorians, to settle with a victim. Yet neither has posted his name.
Church leaders in Baltimore and elsewhere said there were good reasons for listing every offender.
“It doesn’t seem appropriate just to do diocesan priests,” said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, the vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Our goal is to demonstrate to the person harmed that the church understood their pain and the harm that had been done to them, and to get as many victims as possible to come forward.”
Maryann Clesceri, the executive director of a Milwaukee center that serves sexual assault victims, said she and some fellow members of the archdiocese’s community advisory board encouraged Archbishop Dolan to list every abuser because “to maintain the silence is to mirror what the perpetrators want.”
“Some of us then said that if the religious orders did not release the names, those orders should not be allowed in the archdiocese,” she added.
The archbishop said he had encouraged the religious orders to list the names. “They chose not to,” he said. “I regretted their decision.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/nyregion/17dolan.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
~Our related reseach Blogs
Collection Of Research Blogs Documenting The Thousands Of Children Raped By Thousands Of Religious Leaders Of The World
http://exposingreligionblog.tumblr.com/post/7868894744
Billions of dollars that are donated to churches are used to defend pedophile priests and settle lawsuits for their child raping habits.
http://exposingreligionblog.tumblr.com/post/19558367171
The CLASS of the church: Instead of helping the victims of rape by their priests, they declare war on them:
http://exposingreligionblog.tumblr.com/post/20936888454
~Timothy Dolan’s War Against Women
Healthcare, contraception, abortion, politics
Cardinal Dolan: Gov’t contraception policy a “radical intrusion”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57410841/cardinal-dolan-govt-contraception-policy-a-radical-intrusion/
Dolan, bishops lobby against abortion
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/dolan_bishops_lobby_against_abortion_snSGLZmYnLbSCYbf0Q62fJ
He has expressed his full intentions of using his prominent new post as a pulpit to advocate doctrinal views on such national social issues as abortion. During his installation homily, he received a standing ovation after speaking of the Church’s mission:
“To embrace and protect the dignity of every human person, the sanctity of human life, from the tiny baby in the womb to the last moment of natural passing into eternal life.” ~Timothy Dolan
During the 2008 presidential election, Dolan rebuked Democratic vice-presidential candidate then-U.S. Senator Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for “misrepresenting timeless Church doctrine” on abortion, which Dolan called the “premier civil rights issue of our day.”
Defense of unborn is the ‘premier civil rights issue,’ Archbishop Dolan says
http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/US.php?id=2438
~Timothy Dolan’s Right-wing politics
In March 2009, Dolan noted that U.S. President Barack Obama has “taken a position very much at odds with the Church” regarding abortion, said the University of Notre Dame made a “big mistake” in selecting Obama to deliver its graduation ceremony’s commencement speech.
Timothy Dolan: Expanding Access To Birth Control Would Undermine ‘The American Enterprise,’ Spread ‘Secularism’
Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York took his case against the Affordable Care Act’s new rule requiring insurers and employers to provide preventive care services — including contraception — at no additional cost to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. The Catholic Church is fighting the requirement against the tide of public opinion and despite being specifically exempt from providing birth control to its members.
Dolan pulled no punches, however, going so far as to imply that the requirement would undermine the “American enterprise” and spread “secularism” throughout the nation:
DOLAN: You’re a better historian than I am Bill, you know that every great movement in — in American history has been driven by people of religious conviction. And if we duct tape the churches — I’m just not talking about the Catholic Church — if we duct tape the role of religion and the churches and morally convince people in the marketplace that’s going to lead to a huge deficit a huge void. And there are many people who want to fill it up, namely a new religion called secularism, ok, which — which would be as doctrinaire and would consider itself as infallible as they caricature the other religions doing.
So to — to see — to see that morally-driven religiously-convinced people want to exercise their political responsibility, I think that is not only at the heart of biblical religion, it is at the heart of American enterprise.
But since most Americans — and Catholics — reject the Church’s teachings against contraception, Dolan is fighting an uphill battle that will persuade only the most ardent Catholic conservatives. It’s a reality he recognizes, telling O’Reilly, “It’s a tough battle because of that and our opponents are very shrewd because they’ve chosen an issue that they know we don’t — we’re not very popular on.” “[E]ven our — even — even very faithful Catholics, Bill, don’t like their bishops or priests telling them how to vote, a person or even on a particular issue.”
Cardinal Timothy Dolan with Bill O’Reilly discussing the Secularists moves against religion. Catholic cardinal accuses Obama of attempting to divide the church. (WAtch the video)
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/29/454625/timothy-dolan-expanding-access-to-birth-control-would-undermine-the-american-enterprise-spread-secularism/
Cardinal Dolan: You Bet The Church Wants To Have A Say In American Politics
http://www.newshounds.us/cardinal_dolan_you_bet_the_church_wants_to_have_a_say_in_american_politics_03292012
“…namely a new religion called secularism, OK, which would be as doctrinaire and would consider itself as infallible as they caricature the other religions doing.” ~Timothy Dolan
The archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, agreed that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum had a “good point” when he said that John F. Kennedy’s speech about the separation of church in state made him want to “throw up.”
~Timothy Dolan’s War Against Gays
Timothy Dolan prays against gay marriage bill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb06RU3kGyg
Dolan: Heaven help us if gays can wed
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/dolan_heaven_help_us_if_gays_can_Q6inKK6zvzMDB2m2xRfYcJ
NY Archbishop Timothy Dolan: Gays Shouldn’t Marry 1) Because They’re Not Qualified 2) I Can’t Marry My Mom
http://www.queerty.com/ny-archbishop-timothy-dolan-gays-shouldnt-marry-1-because-theyre-not-qualified-2-i-cant-marry-my-mom-20110321/
Dolan: “We got burned” on gay marriage
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/03/dolan-we-got-burned-on-gay-marriage/
Gay-Hating NY Archbishop Timothy Dolan to Be Elevated to Cardinal
Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who warned of the Communist threat from same-sex marriage in New York during the run-up to its legalization last year, will be among those elevated by Pope Benedict to Cardinal in a ceremony on February 18, City Room reports:
Pope Benedict XVI also named 21 other new cardinals on Friday. Eighteen of the new cardinals are under the age of 80, Reuters reported, and therefore eligible to enter the secret conclave to elect a new pope after Benedict dies. There are 120 cardinals who serve as papal elector.
Vatican Radio carried the official announcement and the names of all those who will be elevated in February.
Archbishop Dolan, who was named to succeed Cardinal Edward M. Egan in February 2009, is set to deliver a mass at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick on Friday morning and would respond to the announcement.
Dolan, who claimed to be deceived by politicians over the marriage equality vote after it happened, also said this:
This is a very violation of what we consider natural law that’s embedded in every man and woman and we’re really worried as Americans that it’s going to be detrimental to the common good.
And called it ‘Orwellian social engineering’, comparing it to polygamy:
To tamper with that definition, or to engage in some Orwellian social engineering about the nature and purpose of marriage, is perilous to all of us. If the definition of marriage is continually being altered, could it not in the future be morphed again to include multiple spouses or even family members?
And suggested it was a Communist threat:
Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.
He also put it same-sex marriage in the same category as marrying one’s mommy.
Apparently it was enough anti-gay hate to get him a big promotion.
NY Catholic quits board over Cardinal Dolan’s anti-gay stance
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/08/ny-catholic-quits-board-over-cardinal-dolans-anti-gay-stance/
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