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DIOCESE/State Watch
New Hampshire: The Concord Monitor reported on April 21: “The state's Roman Catholic diocese announced yesterday that all priests and most church employees and volunteers who work with children have been screened and trained to protect children from sexual abuse. Church officials released internal statistics less than a month after a state audit found major deficiencies in the diocese's attempts to honor the terms of its 2002 agreement with the attorney general's office.”
VOTF NH member and founding member of New Hampshire Catholics for Moral Leadership
Carolyn Disco said that while compliance is always good news, "I'd like to
think the figures represent the absolute truth, but I want to hear it from
the state auditors." For
more, click here.
Philadelphia, PA: The cover story of the April 26 issue of National
Catholic Reporter is the diocese of Philadelphia and offers another vignette
of one tragic decision after another in one diocese. “Some of the files seemed
intentionally vague. Others, though, are painfully detailed and provide investigators
with a blueprint of how [Cardinal} Bevilacqua, who led the archdiocese from
1988 to 2003, and his predecessor, Cardinal John Krol (1961-88) routinely
shuffled abusive priests from one unsuspecting parish to the next. (One serial
abuser was moved through so many parishes -- 17 in all -- that archdiocesan
officials worried they were running out of churches where parishioners would
be unaware of his predilections.) Abusers were almost never permanently removed
from active ministry. And in almost every case, the civil authorities were
not informed of the abuse.” Read
more.
- NCR editorial, April 26: “Last month, we made a request of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago after severe lapses in that archdiocese’s child protection program allowed credibly accused abusers to return to ministry, one of whom was arrested in January for molesting three boys. We asked George to use his influential station to convince Rome and his fellow bishops to, first, assemble competent panels of independent expert Catholics to compile reports fully disclosing what happened in each diocese, an act that we think could begin to restore trust in a shaken community.”
And this:
“From the first news of this crisis in 1983, through the years of grudging admission
by bishops that something was amiss, through the explosion of news in 2002 when
the courts forced the release of secret documents in the Boston archdiocese,
through the anguish of the meeting in Dallas in June of that same year, the formation
of a National Review Board and ongoing court cases, the tenacity of the clergy
culture’s grip on Catholic leadership has been the most evident characteristic
of that group’s response.” Read
more.
Denver, CO: According to Zenit.org*,
Archbishop Chaput (Denver, CO) is worried. Writing in First Things, the
Archbishop said, that amending the civil statutes could "decimate the remaining
resources of the Catholic faithful in the United States and steal the religious
future from a generation of Catholic young people." Go
to the May issue of First Things. Let us know what you think at pthorp.ed@votf.org.
- Associated Press reports that retired Bishop Gumbleton, “breaking with Colorado Catholic leaders” met with Denver lawmakers in April “to promote bills aimed at helping childhood sex-crime victims file lawsuits.” In its current form, the bill would allow lawsuits to be filed from as far back as the 1980s.” Three of Colorado’s bishops, including Chaput, have been lobbying hard from their pulpits and in the media against the bill.
Boston, MA: Cardinal O’Malley’s idea of dialogue is a little clearer
to some. The April 23 column of Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara “One-Way
Dialogue” is illuminating. At a meeting with Globe staff
(the full transcript is available
here), O’Malley, and eight male advisors
to the Cardinal, McNamara noted, “It was refreshing, really, a cardinal-archbishop
with no pretension of ideological inclusion. He said he believes in dialogue
but, as he defines it, dialogue is less about listening to other points of
view than about doing 'an awful lot more to help our people to understand what
the church's teachings are.’” For the McNamara column, subscribers can go
here.
- What is also clear is the unusual (although other dioceses have done much
the same) and welcomed step taken in the Boston archdiocese by Cardinal O’Malley
to disclose archdiocesan finances. Read
more. What financial information
does your diocese publish? Let us know at pthorp.ed@votf.org.
Also, this information will be useful to our financial accountability advisors
(see Accountability Now Campaign Update).
•
- The Boston Globe on April 17 reported “Minus priests, parishioners led services at three occupied churches” in Scituate, East Boston and Wellesley.
VOTF Long Island, NY: One more weekend remains for VOTF Long Island, NY’s petition for an elected representative diocesan finance council. Go to www.li-votf.org for details.
LATE News from Ohio: Associated Press reports, “Gov. Bob Taft on Tuesday signed into law a bill that adds the state's clergy to professions required to report suspected sexual abuse. The law also extends the time for victims of abuse by clergy to file lawsuits, although supporters were disappointed that lawmakers removed a provision that would have opened a one-year window for past victims to sue.” The bill takes effect in August.
[*ZENIT is an International News Agency. “Our mission is to provide objective coverage of events, documents and issues emanating from or concerning the Catholic Church.”]
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