LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage
February 6, 2019
By William Lindsey
As more and more U.S. Catholic dioceses — but not the diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, which remains “one of the least transparent” dioceses in the nation — release names of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors, I am following those lists to see if I spot names of priests with connections to my diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m doing this, in part, because I think it’s important that we inform ourselves of what’s happening in our own back yard as we talk about bigger problems that manifest themselves in more than one place in the world. I also want to note that others who are monitoring these lists have been very generous in pointing me to important Arkansas-themed information in them: this is not a project I’m undertaking all on my own, but a collaborative one.
In several lists of credibly accused priests released by dioceses other than the diocese of Little Rock, I do, in fact, see the names of priests with Arkansas ties, all of whom also seem to have had pastoral positions in Arkansas in addition to the ones they had in other states that have resulted in their listing in those states. Spotting these names — not all of which are on the list released by the bishop of Little Rock, Anthony Taylor, last year — makes me recall three things I told you last November as I commented on how more and more dioceses are releasing lists of credibly accused priests, and that I was being told by people with reason to know that some names of credibly accused priests in Arkansas had not been included in the list the Little Rock diocese released in September. I wrote:
1. There appears to be very strong reason — survivors and others tracking the abuse situation in the Catholic church across the U.S. are reporting this all over the place — to conclude that even now, with law enforcement officials breathing down their necks and as they claim to be providing complete information about abusive priests within their dioceses, one bishop after another is hiding information as he discloses names of credibly accused priests.
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