Dolan’s D&C

UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Editorial

Any cursory reader of the news in the last two weeks can’t help but know that Timothy Dolan belongs to the most exclusive men’s club in the world: the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals.

If you are a New Yorker – or a New Jerseyite — or a traveler to anywhere in the circular range of the New York media you have not been able to escape this traveling show of his pre-consistory trip to the Holy Land, his departure from his Fifth Avenue digs for the trip to Rome, his arrival in Rome, the fact that he took a shower at North American College in Rome before going out for a bowl of pasta, his New York decaled jacket approach to press conferences throughout the week, his restaurant visits with family and traveling band of 1,000 in tow, his chosenness for the pre-consistory speech, his working-the-room jaunt down St. Peter’s aisle, his bounding with skirt hem lifted to Pope Benedict to get his hat and ring, his pasta weight gain that keeps him from taking his ring off his finger to see the coat of arms of the man who put it there, his post consistory receptions, his continuing press conferences, and his bag piped arrival back at his New York Fifth Avenue digs. Not to mention the coverage of his tailor, his ringmaker, and his mother, Whew!

All of that dust, we do believe, is the really the architecture of a Dolan D&C strategy: the diversion and charm offensive in the face of the highest stakes to date in the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

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