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| Cardinal Dolan and the Times, Again
By Paul Moses
Dotcommonweal
June 6, 2012
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=19315
Cardinal Timothy Dolan assailed The New York Times this week for its reporting on payments provided to priests who were known sex abusers so that they could be laicized as quickly as possible. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee refers to these payments, made while Dolan was archbishop there, as "funds for transition." Advocates for victims call them a "payoff."
Whatever term one uses, it is clear that, despite what the cardinal says, the church has paid money with the aim of getting known offenders to leave the priesthood. But at the same time, The Times hasn't provided the context needed to understand what Dolan said about one specific payment in 2006, which gives the impression that he lied at the time.
That the payments were intended to induce priest-offenders to leave is clear in a statement the Milwaukee archdiocese issued on May 31:
" … in 2002, at the height of the publicity about clergy sexual abuse, advocates for abuse survivors were demanding that all priest offenders be "defrocked" or laicized.
Responding to that demand, the archdiocesan finance council, which is made up of respected lay leaders in the community, discussed the most expedient and cost-effective way to have offenders laicized or removed from the priesthood. Having someone seek laicization voluntarily was faster and less expensive. It made sense to try and move these men out of the priesthood as quickly as possible.
As part of the voluntary laicization process, the archdiocese assisted men who were leaving ministry by providing them with funds for transition.
One $10,000 payment was disclosed in an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on September 8, 2006. At the time, SNAP called the payment a "payoff." In response, Dolan issued a statement saying:
"For anyone to say this money was a 'payoff' or occurred in exchange for [Franklyn] Becker agreeing to leave the priesthood is completely false, preposterous and unjust. What this was, instead, was an act of charity, in line with Catholic social teaching, that allowed a person to obtain health insurance coverage he simply could not afford. If people want to criticize me for that charity, so be it."
The article also notes that a spokesman for the archdiocese said Becker's laicization was not voluntary – that at Dolan's request, Pope John Paul II removed him from the priesthood in 2004.
That last key fact hasn't appeared in anything I've read this week. If it is true, this particular payment was not an inducement for Becker to laicize but apparently was a sort of "charity" – however misguided that was. It means Dolan may have made a terrible decision, but he didn't lie about it.
So what are we left with? First of all, the church officials involved are trying to have it both ways – they say in their statement that they responded to the outcry over clergy sexual abuse by making payments aimed at getting abusers out of the priesthood as quickly as possible, but yet maintain it's a terrible injustice for the news media to say the payments were meant to induce the priests to leave the priesthood as quickly as possible.
At the same time, the reporting on what Dolan said in 2006 was incomplete. Dolan was responding then to comments about one specific case – one that may differ from the others – and important circumstances of that case were left out of the news reports this week.
One other point about the church and the media. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee maintains a Web page designed to correct what it views as errors in news coverage, so one would assume the folks there are sticklers for accuracy. But I wasn't able to get a call back from the communications office for the past two days.
More important, though, is the question SNAP raised in 2006 and now: How many of these payments (whatever one calls them) are being made in dioceses across the country, and for how much? According to Dolan, SNAP "has no credibility whatsoever." But it has asked a good question.
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