Liturgy Commission Plagued by Pederasty Problems
The Rev. Michael J. Spillane, 59, executive director of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions (FDLC) for sixteen years, had already announced his resignation effective at the end of this year when it was revealed that he had been defrocked in 1991 by the Archdiocese of Baltimore for molesting six youths while working in parishes of the Baltimore Archdiocese from 1969 to 1986. The announcement of Spillane's resignation had appeared in the current FDLC Newsletter (Dec. 2001-March 2002), along with notice that he would receive the organization's 2002 Frederick McManus Award for his "services to pastoral liturgy".Burton also told the Post that he has since learned that when FDLC officials were informed by the Baltimore Archdiocese of Spillane's abuses, they had decided to keep Spillane in his job "because it was purely administrative and involved no contact with children".
He said that Spillane had brought the FDLC out of debt and made major contributions to reform of the Liturgy - including overseeing a project to rewrite the official prayers for a now widely used Children's Mass.
Father Burton, though he noted Spillane's involvement with the Children's Mass, did not mention the latter's association with the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministers [NFCYM], or his consultation with the homosexual activist organization, New Ways Ministry on the controversial 1997 statement of the USCCB Committee on Family, 'Always Our Children'.
In his comments about Spillane, Father Burton did not allude to last year's pederasty scandal involving his own immediate predecessor as FDLC board chairman, Father Kenneth Martin.
Father Martin, 56, was forced to resign from his BCL post six months later, following his June 2001 arrest for molesting a male student at a high school in Maryland where Martin, a former Xavierian Brother, had taught before he was ordained to the priesthood in 1989.