It's nice to see that the Catholic church has been so consistent across borders when it comes to sweeping violations of the law under the carpet. We've seen the same thing happen in Belgium and Ireland, where instead of following the law and reporting rapists, they opted out and took matters into their own hands.
In the case of Milwaukee, the local archdiocese paid off child rapist priests instead of contacting the police. Why does the Catholic church continue telling others what is moral when they so often are wrong and in violation of the law themselves?
Despite previous denials (we can now call them "lies") current New York Cardinal Timothy Doland's Milwaukee archdiocese was deeply involved in this scandal. Why was that acceptable to the church before and why did they elevate him to Cardinal when they had to know what was going on? Now that we know he lied about paying off rapists, shouldn't he be stepping down? Or are lies OK when it's a senior member of the Catholic church?
More on the latest disgusting coverup of rapists at the NY Times:
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.
