BishopAccountability.org
	Archbishop Dolan's Spin Control By Bruce Murphy Milwaukee Journal Sentinel February 10, 2009 http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/murphyslaw/default.asp A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story reported the good news from the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee that it was more than halfway to the goal of its $105 million capital campaign. "People have been remarkably generous," Archbishop Timothy Dolan declared. But maybe the news isn't as good as it sounds. The campaign has raised $57.5 million, but that's in pledges. No word on how much hard money has been received. Given the economic meltdown, those pledges could get hard to collect. The archdiocese admitted to reporter Annysa Johnson that the level of participation by parishes was often weak, ranging from 7 percent to 56 percent of parishioners giving to the fund. But there's reason to think it might get worse – if parishioners believe they are simply paying off legal claims related to sexually abusive priests. In 2006, the archdiocese agreed to pay $16.5 million to 10 victims of abuse by Milwaukee priests. Half of this would be paid for by its insurance, the archdiocese claimed, with the other half coming from the sale of the Cousins Center and other properties. But the archdiocese still hasn't finalized the sale of the Cousins Center to Cardinal Stritch University, and no price has ever been discussed. And last August, a Milwaukee judge ruled that the archdiocese's insurance company was not liable for any of the $16.5 million liability because it involved fraud by the archdiocese. Victims who sued the archdiocese argued it committed fraud by knowingly assigning priests with histories of abuse to parishes without alerting parishioners. This leaves the archdiocese paying all $16.5 million. Worse, it took out a $4.6 million loan to help it cover the payments it started making to the victims and is paying $360,000 in interest per year on this, the archdiocese told the press. All this bad news came out a year after the capital campaign was announced. It might just sour potential donors. What assurance do they have their money isn't going to pay off the legal claims? When the campaign was first announced, Dolan assured the community that none of the money would be used to pay off sexual abuse claims, and all money collected would be placed in a charitable trust outside the assets of the archdiocese. This trust would be overseen by five volunteer trustees. And who were these trustees? Three of the five were bishops, including Dolan and his two auxiliary bishops: Richard Sklba, who Dolan once said was his "main go-to guy" on abuse cases, and William P. Callahan. These trustees don't really qualify as independent of the archdiocese. The Catholic Church has faced a near meltdown in the last decade: as I reported in a prior column, the number of Catholics regularly attending Mass dropped from 270,000 to 165,000 over the last 10 years. This alone makes a $105 million drive a difficult undertaking, but if the parishioners that are left begin to ask the hard questions I've posed here, the task could become all the tougher.
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