UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary
Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 19, 2013
One brother is Obama’s chief of staff. The other is an embattled former top deputy to St. Paul’s Archbishop, charged with covering up sex abuse and refusing to cooperate with the police. Put together, the McDonough brothers show how bad timing and bad moral decisions may push two former “superstars” into very public and very embarrassing falls from grace.
Denis the Politician
Appointed White House Chief of Staff in January 2013 after a career as a foreign policy advisor, “hard-charging” Denis has been called one of the most efficient chiefs of staff in recent memory. Insiders on both sides of the political spectrum say that the White House “has never worked better.”
Unfortunately, that may be not enough to save him. According to the New York Times:
Mr. McDonough’s failure to head off the health care problems surprised those who see him as a man of discipline and attention to detail. But current and former administration officials say that after 10 months on the job, one problem may have been that he stretched himself too thin and tried to do too much himself. …
Kevin the Priest Older brother Kevin is facing a fall from grace of his own. But unlike Denis, this fall is of his own making—what many are calling his “insidious and criminal” cover-up of child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Now, he’s refusing to cooperate with the police. For 17 years, Kevin was top-deputy to the archbishop, one of the most powerful jobs in the archdiocese.
As Vicar General, McDonough was. according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “revered for his work with the poor” and “charmed legislators as chaplain of the Minnesota Senate.”
But while he was charming cops and politicians alike, recently exposed documents show that he was actively covering up for child sex offenders in the priesthood. Although McDonough was the chief child protection officer in the Archdiocese, he, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “had a key role in at least three cases of alleged priest sexual misconduct that, combined, have resulted in a lawsuit against the archdiocese, a priest in jail, the resignation of a top archdiocesan official and calls for the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt.“
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.