Cardinal sins
by digby
When I wrote about Wild Bill Donohue's creepy comments about the victims of the church abuse scandal and their advocates yesterday, I assumed he was typically blowing smoke about having the inside dope on the Church hierarchy's plan to "fight" the victims "one by one." Now, it looks like he might have known what he was talking about. Joe Sudbay reports:
Yesterday, The New York Times had two articles about Catholic Bishops and the child rape scandal, which show the continued hypocrisy of the Catholic church. NY's Cardinal thinks people are being mean, while his fellow church leaders are trying to destroy the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). New York's Cardinal was in Albany, attempting to put the scandal into the past:
Cardinal Dolan criticized a legislative proposal that would, for a year, drop the statute of limitations for filing civil claims for sexual offenses, allowing for lawsuits by people who say they were abused long ago. The cardinal said he was concerned that a flood of lawsuits over abuse by priests could drain the church of money it is using for charitable purposes.
“I think we bishops have been very contrite in admitting that the church did not handle this well at all in the past,” he said. “But we bristle sometimes in that the church doesn’t get the credit, now being in the vanguard of reform. It does bother us that the church continues to be a whipping boy.”
Hmm. Maybe the church is still "a whipping boy" because the church is still trying to screw over victims -- as evidenced by the other article in the NYT...
That article is about the harassment suit against Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) that Donohue was going on about.
It would appear that it isn't just the crazy man. You can't help but wonder if that's the smartest move for an institution that's claiming that it's "conscience" won't let it's employees have access to insurance provided birth control to go on a crusade against rape victims of Catholic priests. But hey, why not. Nobody's even allowed to mention that the same people who covered up decades of sexual abuse in their own institution are all over the country declaring their moral righteousness. Why should they think they can't get away with this too?
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