NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger
By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
on June 03, 2014
In a case of flawless logic, the Catholic Church’s lawyers have discovered a magical loophole that absolves the church of legal responsibility for crimes committed by its priests: a holy punch clock.
Catholic priests, we now know — courtesy of a Delaware Supreme Court hearing in a New Jersey priest-abuse lawsuit — can be “off duty.” When they’re not officially priests, lawyers for the Diocese of Trenton argued, the church shouldn’t be held responsible for their actions.
“How do we determine when a priest is and is not on duty,” one justice asked.
“Well,” the diocese’s lawyer explained, “you can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example.”
See? Bulletproof.
If their legal Hail Mary works, it would effectively cloak the Catholic Church in a legal state of grace.
Bishops could argue that any time a priest breaks the law — in this case, he’s accused of molesting a boy during youth outings to Delaware — he’s on personal time, absolving the church of liability.
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