Patheos blog
January 8, 2019
By Sarah Beth Caplin
As more victims of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church come forward with threats to sue, one cardinal is requesting measures that will avoid “breaking” the Church.
Because we wouldn’t want to hurt the Church’s reputation by exposing child sexual abuse, would we…?
Someone should tell Cardinal Timothy Dolan it’s far too late for that.
His comments came during discussion of a possible bill in New York that would lower the statute of limitations for victims of abuse. As it stands, once you turn 23 in New York, you can’t file a child sexual abuse claim. That would likely change under the new bill, which would also create a one-year window for victims who couldn’t sue in the past for any number of reasons.
If the bill passes, obviously, the Catholic Church would be in a heap of trouble. That’s what worries Dolan, as he wrote in an op-ed for the New York Daily News:
I believe it is important to strengthen the Child Victims Act to ensure that all victim-survivors are the center of this much-needed legislation. The emphasis must be on helping them heal, not breaking government, educational, health, welfare, or religious organizations and institutions.
Way to sneak “religious organizations” in the middle there. If those institutions deserve to be broken for permitting the abuse of children, then break ’em.) Part of that healing process means bringing the offenders to justice, wherever they reside.
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