MASSACHUSETTS
Westborough News
Friday, January 14, 2005
Ms. Plunkitt does not want to shame anybody, but while you were mesmerized by the tsunami, Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian served the autocratic Boston Archdiocese with 10 new clergy sex abuse lawsuits.
Those lawsuits are on top of 150 suits filed since the diocese settled more than 500 cases for $85 million in September 2003. After lawyers take their cut, the left-over money is divvied up amongst victims wronged by Catholic priests who abandon vows of celibacy to kneel before Eros, the unaborted product of the mating of Aphrodite, the Greek god of love and passion, and Ares, the Greek god of war.
Whether it was this latest spate of clergy sex abuse lawsuits or mere coincidence, Ms. Plunkitt had been reading Jimmy Breslin's, "The Church That Forgot Christ." Breslin, a Pulitzer prize- winning New York-based journalist, interviews victims of clergy sexual abuse and leans on Catholic church hierarchy who allege that top brass cover up for hooligan priests known to have engaged in unholy bedlock.
"Give Jimmy credit," Ms. Plunkitt says to Buck Malachi over martinis at the hilltop saloon a few days ago, "Jimmy pulls no punches. He's hot under the collar. His choice of words may seem irreverent, but he's lookin' for accountability when he says Pope John Paul II 'has four subjects on his mind: abortion, abortion, abortion and Poland' and: 'Teachings and discussion of all parts of life must be put aside, thrown to the winds, if necessary, in order to have full Catholic concentration on abortions.'