PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
JOSEPH SLOBODZIAN
Thomas P. Doyle is a Dominican priest with a bachelor’s and five master’s degrees, a canonical lawyer with a doctorate in canon law and a veteran expert witness on Catholic theology and the church.
He has also worked to understand the institutional and moral failures behind the abuse of minors by priests since 1984, when the scandal first erupted in the United States in Louisiana.
Doyle appeared in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court last Thursday at the trial of two Catholic priests involving the sexual abuse of children by some priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington wanted Doyle to explain to the jury some of the more esoteric elements of Catholic theology.
Doyle was parsing the Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church and discussing the significance of baptism, the ceremony in which the priest welcomes an infant into the church and washes away “original sin” – Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden – that Catholics believe all people are born with.
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