By Bridgette P. Lavictoire
Lez Get Real
February 14, 2011
http://lezgetreal.com/2011/02/catholic-leagues-donohue-comes-to-dolans-defense-as-usual/
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If Archbishop Timothy Dolan was busy dropping sacks of kittens into the East River in New York to drown, Bill Donohue would defend him no matter what. Maybe Donohue would draw the line if Dolan was caught hacking bits off of Pope Benedict. Today, he went on to defend Dolan for what amounts to money laundering- which is a crime. He wrote:
Jeffrey Anderson, who has made a killing suing the Catholic Church, is angry there isn't more money in the Milwaukee Archdiocese for him to milk. Now he is pointing his finger at the one Milwaukee archbishop who did more to render justice than any of his predecessors, Timothy Dolan (he headed the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 2002-2009).
Anderson wants to know why the Milwaukee Archdiocese moved $75 million to the parishes in 2004. Because it was held as an investment account for the parishes and was returned to them. That's why. If this is illegal, then Anderson will need an army of lawyers: huge transfers of funds take place every day in religious and secular institutions. Only those with base motives just assume wrongdoing.
If there is no wrong doing, then the Milwaukee Archdiocese would have no problem explaining this in court. The problem is that Dolan has not explained it, and then pushed the archdiocese to declare bankruptcy. In fact, there are questions that need to be asked about this pattern of protecting funds by the Catholic Church. It appears to be a shell game where they shift money from site to site to try and get ahead of the attempts to get restitution for the victims of child sexual abuse. Of course, Donohue seems to believe that the young men and boys who were molested and raped were willing participants in the acts they were subjected to because he believes that a boy- be he teen or pre-teen – would be able to fight off a grown man.
He went on to state:
Anderson also wants to know why $55 million was moved to a cemetery trust in 2008, a year after a Wisconsin court said victims could sue for fraud. Actually, the cemetery transfer took place in 2007, and was entirely consistent with previous practices: the cemetery trust existed, de facto, since the early 1900s and was not formalized until 2007.
And why was it formalized after around a hundred years of defacto existence? Could it be so that they could hide money away and stop any one from holding the Church accountable.
He wraps up with:
Assisting Anderson in this witch hunt is Los Angeles lawyer, Gillian Brown. She is cut from the same cloth: on Friday, she got so out of hand in her rambling attacks that presiding Assistant U.S. Trustee, David Asbach, had to put the arm on her. As if we needed any further proof of the vindictiveness at play, Brown asked about the monetary value of the bishops' rings and crosses. This is exactly the kind of shakedown we would expect from the likes of Anderson and Brown.
SNAP, the professional victims' group, is salivating again. And no wonder: their latest 990 tax return shows they're in big trouble—their revenues are plummeting and they're operating in the red. So they badly need Anderson to grease them again. They are incapable of being shamed.
It seems like the only person who has no shame is Donohue. He laments the days where the Church could declare someone a heretic or a witch and burn them at the stake. The Church has done a wonderful job of playing the victim here in order to try and get away from the damage that they have done. Donohue, predictably, ignores the new mess in Philadelphia. Then again, why should he bother paying attention to that?
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