NEW JERSEY
dotCommonweal
May 3, 2013
Posted by Mollie Wilson O’Reilly
When being constantly outraged and on the attack is how you make your living, you’re bound to get a little sloppy with the details now and then. We’ve seen before what happens when the Catholic League’s William A. Donohue, PhD, starts out with a complaint and then has trouble backing it up with actual evidence, and it isn’t pretty.
When it comes to the church’s sex-abuse crisis, Donohue’s got his reactions all set, regardless of the facts. Is a bishop being criticized for mishandling accusations against an abusive priest? The bishop must be defended; he’s done nothing wrong; the media (and/or leftist Catholics) are plainly out to get him.
Sometimes, though, the facts just don’t line up with Donohue’s interpretation. The recent case of Newark’s Archbishop John J. Myers and Fr. Michael Fugee was a tough one; to maintain that Myers was a good guy getting an unfair rap, Donohue was forced to play lawyer — a lawyer who doesn’t know what the word “or” means. Thus, as Mark Silk explained yesterday, Donohue resorted to insisting that the New Jersey Star-Ledger had smeared Myers by calling for his resignation “because he allegedly did not hold Fugee to the terms of the agreement. As will soon be disclosed,” Donohue said, “this accusation is patently false.” And therefore “the entire editorial board of the newspaper should resign immediately.”
But Donohue’s argument that the accusation was false rests on an obviously erroneous reading of the archdiocese’s court agreement to keep Fugee away from minors. Donohue insists that “the court agreement expressly allowed Father Fugee to have contact with minors, provided he was supervised.” Here’s what the court order actually says:
It is agreed and understood that the Archdiocese shall not assign or otherwise place Michael Fugee in any position within the Archdiocese that allows him to have any unsupervised contact with or to supervise or minister to any minor/child under the age of 18 or work in any position in which children are involved. This includes, but is not limited to, presiding over a parish, involvement with a youth group, religious education/parochial school, CCD, confessions of children, youth choir, youth retreats and day care.
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