NEW JERSEY
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
I can’t let this week end and another begin without mentioning, at least, the important story that has been reported of late from the archdiocese of Newark, NJ. As many readers of this blog will now know, it has come to light that after Father Michael Fugee was convicted of abusing minors in 2003, his conviction got overturned, in part, because the archdiocese of Newark agreed to keep him from contact with children.
That didn’t happen. Knowing fully Fugee’s track record and having made an agreement with the court to keep Fugee away from children, Newark archbishop John Myers has permitted Fugee to attend youth retreats and to go on youth pilgrimages. He appointed Fugee to the important position of co-director of an office forming new priests for the diocese, and he sent Fugee to a parish to do pastoral ministry among families with children without telling any of the parishioners of Fugee’s past.
And so the Newark Star-Ledger is now calling for Myers’s resignation, while Fugee has submitted his resignation from the priesthood. As Mike McShea notes at his This Cultural Christian site, some of the state’s legislators including Sen. Joseph Vitale are also echoing the call for Myers to resign.
Myers, don’t forget, is the Opus Dei bishop (and see also here) who told Catholics supporting marriage equality to stop taking communion last year. At the very same time in which Myers has known that he was exposing children to danger and violating a court agreement to keep Fugee from children, that is to say, he’s been rattling his moral saber about someone else–about his gay brothers and sisters.
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