UNITED STATES
America Magazine
Posted at: Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Author: Nicholas P. Cafardi
I have sometimes criticized the behavior of bishops in their handling of the child sex abuse crisis, but I cannot agree with the criticism of Cardinal Dolan currently being made, regarding the payments that the Milwaukee archdiocese made to malefactor priests for their cooperation in the “laicization,” really dismissal from the clerical state, process.
By some accounts, the Milwaukee archdiocese, under then Archbishop Dolan, paid these priests the sum of $20,000 to agree to seek voluntary “laicization.” As the New York Times reported, “the archdiocese did make such payments to multiple accused priests to encourage them to seek dismissal, thereby allowing the church to remove them from the payroll.”
Note that last phrase—“to remove them from the payroll.” That is the critical phrase here. Every priest, even a priest under suspension, awaiting a canonical trial for child sexual abuse, has the right to support from the diocese. The 1983 Code of Canon Law says this in numerous places – Canon 281, Canon 384, Canon 1350.
This is sometimes called the right to “sustenance,” and it remains the right of the priest unless and until he is dismissed from the clerical state, something that can happen adversarially in a canonical judicial process, or something that can happen administratively at the priest’s request.
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