UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
In case you’ve missed these pieces, folks, I thought that this morning I’d point you to some statements about the Dolan affair that have come to my attention following my posting about that topic this past Monday:
1. The same day I posted, Mark Silk wrote a piece at his Spiritual Politics blog entitled “Dolan Doubles Down.” Mark notes, as my posting did, the attempt of some of the dotCommonweal crowd to defend His Eminence after Laurie Goodstein wrote her report about payoffs to pedophile priests in the Milwaukee archdiocese re: which Dolan clearly knew, though he has indicated the contrary.
2. Also on 4 June, Andrew Sullivan posted again about the Dolan affair with a statement entitled, “Dolan: Is He a Republican Pol or a Cardinal?” Sullivan’s conclusion:
You heard that right. A cardinal from a church revealed to have operated a global child rape cover-up for decades says the chief group for the victims “has no credibility whatsoever.” After this outburst, Dolan took a week off in Ireland.
3. At the SNAP website, David Clohessy has issued a “media events” statement noting that more evidence contradicts His Eminence’s claims re: payoffs to notorious Milwaukee pedophile priest Franklyn Becker. As David notes, new internal evidence from records of the archdiocese of Milwaukee have now surfaced and are available at the Bishop Accountability website showing that Becker was paid $10,000 in 2005, and that the payoff was not linked to “health insurance,” as His Eminence has claimed. The new finds also include a 27 May 2003 letter of Dolan as archbishop of Milwaukee to Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, promising Ratzinger that Dolan would set up a “special fund” to support Becker, who had admitted he had abused minors.
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.