UNITED STATES
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Nov 11, 2013

Yo, Catholic bishops meeting today in Baltimore!

As you may not have heard, last Friday the Bergen County (N.J.) prosecutor announced a pretty amazing agreement with a priest charged with violating the terms of the deal by which he avoided being retried for sex abuse. The priest, Michael Fugee, pledged to seek to be laicized by Rome. The amazing thing was that his boss, Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, was cut out of the arrangement.

How come? Prosecutor John L. Molinelli put it thusly:

By way of this agreement, the State of New Jersey need no longer rely upon cooperation by RCAN [the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark] in supervising Michael Fugee. It has appeared, based on many public comments by Archbishop Myers, that the Church had no intention of monitoring Fugee any further and, based upon…