UNITED STATES
Washington Post
By Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo
What, if anything, changes with the June 22nd conviction of Monsignor William J. Lynn for child endangerment? Legally, one can expect an appeal in order to prevent the former clergy secretary for the Philadelphia Archdiocese from serving the maximum sentence of seven years in jail. But, unlike previous cases, this trial was not of a clerical abuser but of a priest in charge of personnel appointments. The court finding substantiates Lynn’s culpable responsibility for knowing that such abuse was likely to occur, but endangering children nonetheless by assigning abusers to what we Catholics call “near occasions of sin.”
There is little doubt that since 2002 the bishops have legislated stricter guidelines that have had the effect of substantially reducing the instances of clerical pedophilia.
I would not agree with Dr. William Donohue of the Catholic League, however, that the conviction of the monsignor represents a “victory” over the church’s anti-Catholic enemies. Reading the transcript makes it hard to avoid the prosecutors’ insistence that the monsignor had “helped the archdiocese keep predators in ministry, and the public in the dark, by telling parishes their priests were being removed for health reasons and then sending the men to unsuspecting churches.” This may not be a conspiracy, (one of the charges on which Lynn was dismissed) but it is a crime.
To a reasonable observer, this case demonstrates that the courts will not afford clergymen a version of the Nazi’s Nuremburg defense that they “were only following orders.”
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