Editorials

National Survivor Advocates Coalition
February 24, 2012

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/editorials/

Any cursory reader of the news in the last two weeks can’t help but know that Timothy Dolan belongs to the most exclusive men’s club in the world: the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals.

If you are a New Yorker – or a New Jerseyite — or a traveler to anywhere in the circular range of the New York media you have not been able to escape this traveling show of his pre-consistory trip to the Holy Land, his departure from his Fifth Avenue digs for the trip to Rome, his arrival in Rome, the fact that he took a shower at North American College in Rome before going out for a bowl of pasta, his New York decaled jacket approach to press conferences throughout the week, his restaurant visits with family and traveling band of 1,000 in tow, his chosenness for the pre-consistory speech, his working-the-room jaunt down St. Peter’s aisle, his bounding with skirt hem lifted to Pope Benedict to get his hat and ring, his pasta weight gain that keeps him from taking his ring off his finger to see the coat of arms of the man who put it there, his post consistory receptions, his continuing press conferences, and his bag piped arrival back at his New York Fifth Avenue digs. Not to mention the coverage of his tailor, his ringmaker, and his mother, Whew!

All of that dust, we do believe, is the really the architecture of a Dolan D&C strategy: the diversion and charm offensive in the face of the highest stakes to date in the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

The bread and circuses of the consistory is now fully juxtaposed to the seating of a jury in the child endangerment case of the highest ranking cleric to date to face a courtroom, the gatekeeper for Philadelphia cardinals, Monsignor Lynn; the full court press of Kansas City/St. Joseph Diocese Bishop Robert Finn defense attorney to unhoist him from his own petard; the full throttle attack against the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in a growing strategy of subpoenas of staff for information for cases to which SNAP is not a party wrapped in a sinister drive to get to SNAP’s confidential records of victims conversations and correspondence.

It’s a dark retrospective of our Borgia, Medici, Borghese past.

And it cost a bundle.

Did we mention bread and circuses? Indeed, it cannot be lost on his new Eminence Dolan that both are what is expected of him. Diversion for sure from the largest crisis in the Church’s last 500 years and money. Legatus Society members, Knights of Columbus, and adoring New Yorkers your wallets are about to be tapped.

For in all the talk — or at least tossed off references — to the wardrobe color of cardinals being the reminder of the devotion of cardinals to extend to the shedding of one’s blood — the neglect seems to be in saying in whom the devotion is placed.

We believe that if Cardinals, these 22 new ones, and the old ones, believed that the devotion was indeed to the Lord and not to the Supreme Pontiff who gave them these positions that they would do something equivalent to the shedding of their blood – such as — going to prison for the perpetration of criminal acts of rape, sodomy and life long horror on innocent children entrusted to the Church’s care.

And if they believe, as Cardinal Egan does, that they have nothing to be held accountable for, then indeed for the equivalent of shedding their blood, they should go to prison in the place of one who is guilty of these atrocious acts.

Dolan was not the only American to get new clothes, ring and Roman church to support last weekend, Edwin O’Brien, who headed the Military Archdiocese of the United States at a particularly interesting time: the time when Thomas Doyle was a chaplain in Germany, six months from retirement, and an expert witness in a growing number of sexual abuse cases.

When the newly minted Cardinal O’Brien sat in St. Peter’s Basilica and thought about what got him to that day surely the countenance of Thomas Doyle past before his mind’s eye.

The politics of diversion and charisma will continue

We ask our readers not to be taken in by it, stopped in your tracks by it, defeated by it, or in any way diverted by it.

This is shoulder to the grindstone time.

Give to SNAP. They need it now more than ever.

Think of the money that was spent on the consistory show – and weep – and then act.

Make a call today to a survivor you know. Thank them for their courage.

Write a letter to any New York media outlet.

Lift the veil of secrecy.

Justice Brandeis was right: sunlight is the best disinfectant.

— Kristine Ward, Chair, NSAC

— KristineWard@hotmail.com , 937-272-0308/