President of Catholic Bishops Conference Cardinal Dolan bribed pedophile priests to go away quietly

[maxomai]

Oh dear.

Say this for Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: He sure is a multi-tasker.

When he's not threatening to cease "liv[ing] out the imperatives of our faith to serve, teach, heal, feed, and care for others" unless all American women are denied access to contraception, using his blog to smear children raped and molested by priests, coordinating massive lawsuits against the Obama administration because women's health care makes him sad, appearing on TV to false witness through his teeth, appreciating "the work done" by the hate group Catholic League, or organizing a national "fortnight" of civil disobedience, he's apparently busy praying that no one will find out about how, before he became the most powerful Catholic figure in America, he secretly bribed pedophile priests to leave the Church quietly.

And then the New York Times found out. Quoting that story now:

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.”

Except that it turned out to be absolutely, positively true.

So, the Roman Catholic Church has no moral authority left. And their spiritual authority only lasts as long as one doesn't take matters into their own hands. That means that the only thing left sustaining the Church ... is cultural inertia. Yeah, that'll last.

Comments

Do they still think it is 1412 or something?

[arkham4269.livejournal.com]

I just can't see how these people think they can just wave their bishop's miters and say, "Nothing to see here folks" regarding pedophilia. A crime where the criminal must be protected from death from OTHER criminals. It's like the one crime Western types are totally against.

Maybe the Church thinks "boy dancing" like done in Afghanistan is still appropriate but come on! It really shows the closed off mind-set of an organization which spent so much of its history not only not being held accountable but rarely having to appear as if they were trying to be.

Re: Do they still think it is 1412 or something?

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Indeed. They've gone from effectively running Ireland to being increasingly unpopular and slowly falling from power there, and this has already happened in most of Europe. They haven't gotten quite the same swing of negative opinion in the US, but things are clearly headed that way. However, given their extreme level of hierarchy and a pope who would clearly be more at home in 1412, the upper leadership is going to keep lying and deluding themselves. With luck, we'll soon see a few of these scumbags behind bars in the US.