MINNESOTA
The American Conservative
Catholic Bishops As Fifth Columnists In War On Religious Liberty
By ROD DREHER • July 15, 2014
A reader sends along the sworn affidavit of Jennifer Haselberger (PDF), from 2008-2013 the chief canon lawyer for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. It’s part of a civil lawsuit having to do with alleged clerical sexual abuse in that archdiocese, and the conduct of its archbishop, John Nienstedt.
Learning how the sausage is made in the Minneapolis archdiocese makes for sobering reading. For starters, she said that shortly after she was hired by the archdiocesan marriage tribunal, she learned that the priest leading it, Father Conlin, had been taken out of parish ministry because he had fathered a child out of wedlock with a married woman — a woman that some believed he had been counseling when he got her pregnant. Haselberger said she was shocked to discover this, and even more shocked when she learned that the archbishop and many other canon lawyers knew about it before the priest was appointed to lead the tribunal — a position in which he would be leading decision-making about the validity of marriages, and dealing with emotionally vulnerable men and women. Haselberger testified that she wanted to quit her job, but another canon lawyer told her that if she did, people would think that she was the woman carrying Father Conlin’s baby, and that it would hurt her ability to find another canon law position.
When she eventually left the archdiocese for the first time, in her exit interview she talked about how the archdiocese’s toleration of moral corruption by priests on the tribunal hurt the morale of its lay employees. At that time, Harry Flynn was the Minneapolis archbishop — and tolerated all this even as he was chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ sexual abuse task force. …
If Haselberger is telling the truth, it staggers the mind to think that Pope Francis — who has the right to remove Nienstedt — tolerates this man remaining in charge a single day longer. Then again, Bishop Finn still rules in Kansas City, and according to a comprehensive report done by BishopAccountability.org, the pope had a poor record on responding to abuse as Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
As a non-Catholic, I read this story, and think about how religious liberty in this country is now under assault, especially how right here in Louisiana, the seal of the confessional is severely threatened by ongoing litigation. And I think about how the archbishops of Minneapolis-St. Paul have behaved, saying one thing to reassure the public, but in fact behaving in exactly the opposite way, doing whatever they could to protect the clericalist mafia, and to marginalize Catholics like Jennifer Haselberger, who only wanted the Church to be the Church. I think about how the archdiocese appointed a priest who — if Haselberger is telling the truth (and as chancellor, had access to his personnel file) — had used the confessional as a way to facilitate an adulterous relationship.
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