Head of Catholic Bishops Paid Pedophiles to Disappear

via Truth-out:

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."

Ave Maria's Pass for Pederast Priests*

via Bishop Accountability:

According to Ave Maria University's website, the AMU Founder's Club hosted a visit from the President of "Opus Bono Sacerdotii" (OBS), Joseph Maher, one year ago this past Friday (December 19). IRS records show that the self-described exempt purpose of OBS is to offer "outplacement services for Roman Catholic priests and religious men and women for the purpose of providing a transition from one position to another". The University's Founders Club, which was established by Tom Monaghan (NY Times, 2/10/2003), advertised that the purpose of OBS was "to find solutions to sensitive situations confronting priests and religious in accordance with the authentic teaching of the Church."

"Outplacement services" for "sensitive situations"?

Translation: OBS helps to quietly shuffle around pederast priests.

According to the OBS website, Joseph Maher helped start the organization in Detroit in 2002 after "he received much public attention for his staunch support of a priest from his parish who was accused of rape. Today, over 2,000 priests have contacted Opus Bono Sacerdotii for assistance, with more calling on a weekly basis."...OBS and its Ave Maria supporters might claim that the mission of the organization is to support accused innocent priests who are defending wrongful allegations. But according to their website, OBS cares nothing about whether their clients are innocent or guilty (excerpt):

"In cases where legal procedures in civil, criminal or canon law are required: A client's innocence or guilt is not a determining factor in obtaining assistance from OBS"

From the Washington Post, Oct 13, 2002:

"In Detroit, Maher said he does not attempt to determine whether a priest is innocent or guilty before providing financial help from Opus Bono Sacerdotii. The group, which he said has raised $100,000 and applied to the Internal Revenue Service for charitable status, is assisting the Rev. Robert Burkholder, who returned to Michigan from retirement in Hawaii this month to face charges of molesting a 13-year-old boy in 1986."

"In an interview published by the Detroit News in August, Burkholder, 82, admitted that he had had sexual encounters with "maybe a dozen or two" boys between the ages of 11 and 14. , but contended that they were consensual. "It takes two to tango," he said. "Some of the accusations are true, but so what? I was a priest — a good priest — who had a weakness."

Burkholder, who was labeled Michigan's worst pedophile priest by Wayne County Prosecutor Michael Duggan, was sentenced to jail after pleading no contest to two second-degree criminal sexual conduct charges. As far back as 1993, it was known that Burkholder was a menace; that year, his priestly duties were constrained by his diocese as he admitted, in writing, to molesting at least 23 boys. None of that - not even Burkholder's unrepentant "two to tango" or "so what" - mattered to OBS. In another pederast crusade adopted by OBS, Maher sent 3,000 fund raising letters to support a jailed priest who was accused of 13 sex crimes on 6 boys. South Bend Tribune, Oct. 28, 2005, excerpt:

"I think it's outrageous what [OBS is] doing," [Bishop] D'Arcy said. "We never gave them any [diocesan mailing] list. They're unauthorized to do this and it's wrong. … I don't know anything about (Maher) and he doesn't know anything about this case. He's out of order writing to our people."
One recipient is a local man scheduled to testify at the trial that LeBrun fondled him in the early 1980s.
"I was extremely offended to receive this thing, and to try to solicit support from victims?" the local man said. "How low."

In January 2006, the priest that Maher so vigorously helped was sentenced to 111 years in prison. OBS is connected to Tom Monaghan far beyond Joseph Maher's invitation to speak at the Ave Maria University Founder's Club. Maher and OBS co-founder Paul Barron are both members of Legatus, Tom Monaghan's club for rich Catholic businessmen. OBS and Ave Maria also pick from the same talent pool. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic power broker who sits on AMU's Board and often defends Monaghan's questionable educational practices, serves on the OBS Advisory panel. OBS quotes Neuhaus:

"More power to you [OBS]! It is important that we counter this vicious notion that an injustice or alleged injustice of years ago can be righted by a new injustice now. The demand that a person "must be punished," no matter how long ago the offense or the repentance and transformation of the offender, is nothing more than a demand for vengeance, which, as the Scriptures remind us, is not rightly ours. Do let me know how your project progresses.

Cordially, (The Rev.) Richard John Neuhaus"

Another OBS Advisor was the prominent canon lawyer Fr. Gregory Ingels. In 2002, he helped craft the "zero tolerance" policy on sex abuse adopted by American Catholics. The following year, in 2003, he was charged for a 1972 incident of sodomy and "substantial sexual conduct" with a boy. In the criminal complaint, Ingels acknowledged having had sex with the boy and could be heard on tape saying, "What I did to you was terrible."
This was not a singular moment of weakness or indiscretion on Ingels' part. In the summer of 2003, a second case against Ingels was assembled by the local district attorney. A former female student of Fr. Ingels, Jane Parkhurst, alleged that the priest began to "cultivate" her at age 15, taking advantage of a troubled home life that started after her parents died in a car accident. She told authorities that Ingels had sexually abused her for four years starting in 1973....Even after all this, OBS President Joseph Maher was quoted as saying that his organization was "grateful to have him [Ingels]" (San Francisco Weekly; 7/13/2005):

"He's an excellent priest, a very holy man, and he's a great help to us."

more...


*I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the issue of sexual relationships between adults and teens can be a complex subject, considering that the relationship between a willing 17-year-old and her 21-year-old boyfriend is legally considered to be the same as that between a reluctant 15-year-old and a coercive 45-year-old. In my opinion this lack of distinction is a failure of the legal system and Opus Bono is taking advantage of moral ambiguity perpetuated by the courts. It should suffice to say that no one who has sexually assaulted an 11-year-old should be quietly protected from scandal and allowed to retain a job position requiring enormous trust from their greater community. Also, another issue to keep in mind is that there are important biological reasons for age of consent laws, such as the fact that teenage girls who become pregnant before the age of 17 are much more likely to endure serious health complications. By adopting a blanket policy of offering moral and financial support to any priest accused of sexual crimes, guilty or innocent, Opus Bono has effectively sent the message that sexual assault and child molestation are great ways for troubled priests to receive support and attention. Not only is this policy an attempt to evade criminal prosecution, it also endangers the safety and well-being of local church communities.

The Catholic Right is run as a cryptocracy

via talk2action:

Bishop Robert Finn has many powerful friends on the Catholic Right. As a hard charging leader of what he has called "the church militant" and one of four American Opus Dei bishops, Finn is clearly one of their own. Nevertheless, it is extraordinary that his allies have chosen to side with an element in the institutional church obsessed with unquestioned authority and against Catholic children and their families. While Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is ubiquitous, he is not the only one rallying to defend Finn's handling of alleged child abuser Fr. Shawn Ratigan. It is time to throw open the shutters and allow some daylight into the shadows and dark corners of Catholic neoconservatism.

The Catholic League

While Bill Donohue and the Catholic League need no introduction, it is worth a quick review of their key members and advisers who share responsibility for the League's support for Finn.

Among the League's Board of Directors is Raymond Arroyo of Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) who is reputed to be either an Opus Dei member or cooperator (but who in any case has certainly vigorously defended the controversial group). Also on the board is Candace de Russy, an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a neocon think tank that features Lewis "Scooter" Libby (of Valerie Plame fame) as a Senior Vice President. The League's Board of Advisers is populated by such leading neocons as Hadley Arkes, Mary Ann Glendon, Robert P. George, Michael Novak and George Weigel, who has sanitized past Vatican failures regarding pedophile clergy and recently declared his scorn for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

Thomas Monaghan

Another Catholic League adviser is Domino's Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan, who in many ways is the key to Donohue's activities in Kansas City-St. Joseph. Monaghan has, over the years, advanced the twin agendas of laissez-faire economics and ultra-orthodox Catholicism with money and political muscle. He has helped to fund Operation Rescue and Fr. Frank Pavone's Priests for Life as well as Legatus, the ultra-conservative millionaires-only club he founded. And according to Forbes, he has reportedly done the same for Opus Dei. Monaghan is also involved with another Finn defender, Opus Bono Sacerdotii.

Opus Bono Sacerdotii

The Kansas City Star recently reported that the Fr. Ratigan, the alleged pedophile priest, had received a psychiatric evaluation at Bishop Finn's behest. But there are questions about the psychiatrist's impartiality as well as his diagnosis. The Star pointed out:

Richard Fitzgibbons, who examined Ratigan in January after disturbing photographs of children were found on the priest's computer, is an adviser to Opus Bono Sacerdotii, according to the group's website. The nonprofit organization provides services to accused and imprisoned priests, including financial, legal and emotional support.

After his evaluation, Fitzgibbons told Finn that Ratigan was not a pedophile and that his pornography problem was a result of loneliness and depression, according to a report commissioned by the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese.

(Note that Fitzgibbons's diagnosis was "loneliness and depression" not pedophilia.)

Opus Bono Sacerdotii (OBS) describes, its mission:

Opus Bono Sacerdotii (Work for the Good of the Priesthood) was founded in response to many sensitive situations with priests requesting confidential assistance for unique problems. These situations may encompass a whole spectrum of circumstances, however, the success in caring for Catholic priests is understanding the uniqueness of each individual and their particular needs, abilities and desires especially as it effects the extraordinary relationship between the natural and supernatural aspect of the person of the priest.

BishopAccountability.org describes OBS co-founders Joseph Maher and Paul Barron as "members of Legatus." This is not unusual. Based in Monaghan's hometown of Detroit, Michigan, many of the key members of Legatus are also affiliated with the Monahan-founded or funded organizations, notably the ultra orthodox Ave Maria University ("AMU"), in Naples, Florida. These include such Catholic Right luminaries as the late neocon activist Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Fr. Thomas G. Guarino, and Fr. Michael Orsi. A stern-looking Donohue is pictured on the OBS homepage next to a link to his piece, "Straight Talk about the Catholic Church and SNAP Exposed." Fr. Orsi's past pronouncements about victims of priestly pedophilia have been controversial. For example, as a December 22, 2008 post at BishopAccountability.org noted:

Orsi's defense of sexually dysfunctional priests is rich with clericalism. This conclusion was highlighted in the book "Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church". Leon Podles, a former federal investigator, is the book's author and, interestingly, a former supporter of AMU. In the chapter "Clerical Accomplices", Dr. Podles describes the pass that Orsi gives to guilty homosexual/pederast/pedophile priests as reflective of a time "in which members of society had unequal status before the law. Such inequality is always irritating, and is often used to protect privileged malefactors - and Orsi resents the loss of privilege."

Orsi uses his Ave Maria Chaplaincy to promote and defend OBS thanks to his two bosses, Ave Maria School of Law Chairman Tom Monaghan and President-Dean Bernard Dobranski. For all of the rants about liberal immorality, attacks on the family, and the "culture wars" penned by Monaghan and Dobranski in their fundraising letters, you'll never hear about the wink-and-nod given to Orsi or OBS in keeping pederasts at the altar.

That these Catholic Right leaders seem to want to save Finn's position as bishop at almost any cost, suggests that their goals for the Church as a bastion of religious and political authoritarianism, takes precedence over everything else -- including the safety and well being of children.


Also related, via Slate, is this article about how the Catholic Church manages to avoid financial disclosure rules that secular organizations are bound to. This information is crucial in understanding how groups such as Opus Bono Sacerdotii have at times been able to utilize the Church's wealth and bureaucratic exemptions to circumvent civil law, a privilege that is obviously unavailable to the rest of the world, despite the group's attempt to portray priests accused of pedophilia as a persecuted minority.

How Rich Is the Catholic Church?

Pope Francis is not just the spiritual leader of one of the world’s major religions: He’s also the head of what’s probably the wealthiest institution in the entire world. The Catholic Church’s global spending matches the annual revenues of the planet’s largest firms, and its assets—huge amounts of real estate, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Vatican City, some of the world’s greatest art—surely exceed those of any corporation by an order of magnitude. But it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to understand exactly how rich the church is. That’s in part because church finances are complicated. But it’s also because, in the United States at least, churches in general are exempted from the financial reporting and disclosure requirements that otherwise apply to nonprofit groups. And it turns out, that exemption may have undesirable consequences.

The main thing we know about Catholic Church finance is that in cash flow terms, the United States is by far the most important branch. America is a rich country with a large population of Catholics. What’s more, America’s Catholic population is a religious minority. That’s meant that, rather than using political clout to influence the shape of mainstream government institutions, as in an overwhelmingly Catholic country such as Brazil, the Catholic Church in the United States has created a parallel state: a vast web of schools, hospitals, universities, and charities that serve millions of clients.

Our best window into the overall financial picture of American Catholicism comes from a 2012 investigation by the Economist, which offered a rough-and-ready estimate of $170 billion in annual spending, of which almost $150 billion is associated with church-affiliated hospitals and institutions of higher education. The operating budget for ordinary parishes, at around $11 billion a year, is a relatively small share, and Catholic Charities is a smaller share still. Apple and General Motors, by way of comparison, each had revenue of about $150 billion worldwide in Fiscal Year 2012. Legally speaking, there is no such thing as “the Catholic Church,” which is why these finances get so complicated. As far as the law is concerned, each diocese is a separate legal entity, incorporated in the states where it operates. Generally speaking, they are organized as what’s known as a corporation sole—a legal corporation wholly controlled by the individual bishop rather than a board of directors—and not officially part of any larger transnational spiritual organization. This has led to conflicts during the sex abuse scandals. Lawsuits have caused disputes about how deep the church’s pockets go and who should pay.

On several occasions, abuse-related litigation has inspired dioceses to declare bankruptcy, which offers a rare window into the internal financial organization of the institution. Individual parishes, though operating under the umbrella of the relevant bishop, have a fair degree of financial autonomy. They conduct separate fundraising and maintain separate expenses. That way, parish donors can feel they’re bolstering their particular community and not an impersonal bureaucracy. But it’s common for parish investment funds within a single diocese to be pooled. When a diocese declares bankruptcy, this raises the question of whether pooled parish investment funds are available to be seized by the bishop’s creditors or whether they exist separately.

As a fascinating article in this month’s American Bankruptcy Institute Journal explains, the status of parish investment funds depends on some very subtle details. Both the Diocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Wilmington ran pooled investment funds in which a single account simply noted how much each parish had contributed. The difference is that in Wilmington, Del., operating funds were also mingled into the pooled account, whereas in Milwaukee they were kept separate. That small difference ended up costing Wilmington parishes $74 million in exposure to Episcopal creditors. At the same time, as a matter of Canon Law individual parishes can be wholly “suppressed,” merged into other parishes, or otherwise divided up, essentially at the discretion of the bishop—notwithstanding the existence of separate bank accounts. This authority suggests that the diocese does indeed wholly own and control its parishes, but church officials take advantage of the ambiguity, sometimes claiming to fully control its parishes, sometimes—for legal reasons—arguing that the parishes are wholly independent entities.

Given America’s diverse religious landscape, the Catholic Church is hardly unique in taking advantage of the First Amendment to engage in some opaque accounting. It’s simply the largest player in this game. Lawrence Wright’s recent Scientology exposé, Going Clear, reveals egregious exploitation of religious privileges for the personal financial benefit of church leaders. Or consider the case of the Tennessee pastor arrested on money laundering and drug charges only because a local TV news investigation revealed that he was using donations to pay off what amounted to personal debts.

The legal framework that allows for this funny business has been constructed in the name of religious freedom but hardly seems required by that important principle. America has a robust ecology of secular nonprofit groups that manage to abide by fairly stringent accounting and disclosure standards. These help donors know where their money is going and reassure residual claimants that there’s some consistent theory of whose assets are whose. Religion is big business—the Catholic Church the biggest of all—and it deserves to be treated as such in the relevant ways.

Opus Dei Bishop charged with failure to report child pornography

via The Daily Kos:

Father Shawn Ratigan of the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, led by Bishop Robert Finn, has pleaded guilty in Federal Court to four counts of producing child pornography and one count of attempted production of child pornography. Both Ratigan's and Bishop Finn's defenses (Finn is charged with failing to report it) had become a rallying point for some in the Catholic Right, particularly those having intersecting activity in Opus Dei, the Bill Donohue-led Catholic League and neoconservatism. They further used the incident to try to destroy the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). But now that Ratigan has confessed to his pedophilia-related crimes -- what do these reactionaries who imagine themselves as defenders of the faith have to say for themselves?

The trial date for Bishop Finn has been set for September 24, 2012. As I reported here and here, Bishop Finn, previously best known for his Opus Dei vision for the Church and society, had constructive knowledge of improper touching of young girls and possession of child pornography by Ratigan. Ratigan's defense was eventually taken over by Opus Bono Sacerdotii (OBS), a Michigan-based organization funded by Domino's Pizza chain founder Tom Monaghan. OBS sees its mission as defending priests from allegations of sexual abuse. OBS had Ratigan examined by a staff psychiatrist who determined that Ratigan was not a pedophile but suffering from "loneliness and depression."

That questionable diagnosis has been superceded by Ratigan's August 2, 2012 confession and guilty pleas in Federal Court. As The Kansas City Star reported:

Thursday afternoon, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan stood in the very public forum of a federal courtroom and confessed to some of his own.

Ratigan, 46, pleaded guilty to using five girls to produce or attempt to produce child pornography over several years while serving as pastor to congregations in the Northland and St. Joseph.

As well as:

Each count carries a maximum sentence of up to 30 years in federal prison.

"When a defendant who wears a religious collar, who has the trust of the community, engages in conduct of this nature, his crimes are more devastating and more reprehensible," said David M. Ketchmark, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. "With today's guilty pleas ... there's an assurance that he will face stiff mandatory penalties and that he won't have an opportunity to harm another child."

Ketchmark said prosecutors will recommend what he termed "a virtual life sentence."

This brings us back to Bill Donohue of the Catholic League who has distinguished himself by attacking Ratigan's victims; the The Kansas City Star for covering the crimes and the cover-up; and SNAP and their attorneys for advocating for the victims. Earlier in the year he staged a number of events in Kansas City at which he denounced anyone who dared to question Bishop Finn's actions in the matter. So far, the response of Donahue, and (as far as I know) the other reactionaries mentioned above, has been absolute silence. A quick view of the Catholic League's web page containing the organization's most recent press releases has nary a cyber peep about Kansas City, including one statement on child abuse. What then do we hear in the silence of the Church and its archest defenders? For at least this Catholic it confirms my initial belief that the actions of Donohue, his organization, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and all those who coalesced around Bishop Finn, that their actions on Kansas City had nothing to do with the well-being of everyday Catholics and everything to do with keeping the hierarchy free from accountability.

Bishop Finn has many powerful friends on the Catholic Right. As a hard charging leader of what he has called "the church militant" and one of four American Opus Dei bishops, Finn is clearly one of their own. The fact that these activists want to save Finn's position as bishop at almost any cost, suggests that their goals for the Church as a bastion of religious and political authoritarianism takes precedence over everything else -- including the safety and well being of children. Silence might be a legitimate legal consideration for some in light of Finn's pending trial. But it soon will be time for Donohue and his cohorts to announce their penance. They could begin by apologizing to Ratigan's victims; explaining how they could have been so wrong; telling us how they intend to mend their ways; and making some kind of restitution not only to the victims of children in the care of the Church, but to all those whom they have subjected to calumny.