BishopAccountability.org
	Diocese's Religious Duty Holds No Sway over Court's Decision News Journal November 21, 2009 http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20091121/OPINION11/911210315 The diocese of Wilmington has an understandable dilemma. Centuries of Catholic teaching and traditions require the church to provide for the needs of retired priests, including those who sin. This religious duty, exercised as a moral obligation, is difficult to bear considering that this lifetime provision guarantee is also available to pedophile priests. The shameful, indefensible actions of these men have forced the diocese to seek bankruptcy protection as lawsuits against the church multiply. After filing for Chapter 11 protection last month, the diocese told the judge it would not make any payments to priests accused of sexual abuse, even if the abuse had not been substantiated, without a court order. Now it wants to claim an obligation to care for retired clergymen, including those dismissed from public ministry but not yet defrocked. A motion filed Thursday asks for permission to continue paying benefits to six confirmed pedophiles, including 80-year-old former priest Francis DeLuca, who was defrocked after serving a jail term in New York for repeatedly abusing his grandnephew. By consenting to the secular oversight of a bankruptcy court, the diocese agreed to be bound by secular law. Considering these heinous acts, including the lifelong emotional and psychological pain of victims who trusted priests when they were most vulnerable, the court should say no. It is obligated to be fair, not compassionate. Its primary duty is to determine the fairest and most certain way the diocese's debtors can be made whole. And for that, there is an agreed-upon class of plaintiffs whom the church no longer challenges in their claims as victims of priests, some of whom were transferred to other dioceses, enabling them to continue their crimes.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.