Posted on 11/21/2009 1:29:17 PM PST by Gamecock
WILMINGTON, Del.-- The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington is obligated to pay retirement benefits to six priests who are confirmed pedophiles, church officials argued in a bankruptcy court filing Thursday seeking permission to keep making the payments.
After filing for bankruptcy last month, the diocese agreed not to make payments to priests accused of sexual abuse without court approval. That agreement was made after objections were raised by attorneys for alleged abuse victims who now sit on a creditors committee.
Attorneys for the diocese now seek authorization to provide pensions, housing costs and medical coverage to six confirmed child abusers. They cited an obligation to care for retired clergy, including priests dismissed from public ministry and facing laicization, or defrocking.
"Only the Vatican has the power to laicize clergy," the diocese said. "Thus, while several priests have been dismissed from the public ministry and have laicization proceedings pending against them, for the time being they remain clergy whom the debtor supports, and must continue to support."
The motion also seeks permission to keep paying benefits to another priest who has been accused of sex abuse, though the claims have not been substantiated. He still has authority to serve as a priest.
The diocese argues that pension payments would not be taken from funds that might be used to pay creditors, including abuse victims waiting for settlement payments.
James Stang, an attorney for the creditors committee, described the filing as "outrageous."
Officials with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, could not recall a similar motion in the six other bankruptcies involving Catholic dioceses in the U. S. The group also noted that the Wilmington diocese is paying a public relations firm a minimum of $100,000 for bankruptcy-related work.
"It's morally wrong for a church official to cry poverty and then pay six figures to a PR firm. And it's morally wrong for a church official to put helping child predators ahead of helping child victims," said Barbara Dorris, national outreach director for SNAP.
The diocese wants to continue paying medical coverage for former priest Francis DeLuca, 80, who was removed from public ministry in 1993 and defrocked last year after serving a jail term in New York for repeatedly abusing his grandnephew.
The diocese said it has provided DeLuca "charity" since he was defrocked in the form of a $1,000 monthly allowance and medical coverage. The allowance has been terminated, but the diocese still wants to provide medical coverage
Let's see,
I didn't molest small boys
I don't support a organization by tithing to it even though it shuffles child molesters from on diocese to another.
Nope, I'm guilty of a lot, but not this.
I’m not worried about the spelling. Anyway, I’m Irish.
I’ll stand by what I posted.
Riiight, the Roman Catholic Church is free of any wrong doing in this matter. < /sarc>
The Church in America was grossly negligent in allowing the abuse by priests, should compensate the victims richly and punish the guilty according to the law of the land.
But the article is meaningless.
There probably isn’t much else the diocese can do, because otherwise they will be sued by these priests and end up having to pay even more.
I like the fact that your article included somebody who had been accused but nothing had been proven. Sweet. Maybe somebody will accuse you of something someday and you’ll see how great this is.
Exactly! What these priest,and teachers have done is grossly wrong. However, if they have earned their pensions, they should be able to keep them. I am sure the priests pensions are quite low, except for health care.
Some of the victims groups want to make these priests homeless and have them starve to death. I can really understand their anger and hate. However, that does not mean others including Dioceses, should give in and concur with the hate. I think some even want to destroy the church.
Would you prefer they be homeless or even starve to death?
You wrote:
“Nope, I’m guilty of a lot, but not this.”
I never said you were. What you’re guilty of is not what is in the article.
The price of flights to Thailand has increased.
You wrote:
“Riiight, the Roman Catholic Church is free of any wrong doing in this matter. < /sarc>”
The Catholic Church absolutely is free of wrong doing in this matter. Individual bishops and priests, not the Church, were the problem.
We all know appearances can be deceptive. I would hesitate to reach a moral conclusion on the basis of appearances alone.
For the umpteenth time, I have good reason to know that child abuse was swept under the rug in secular organizations as well as in denominations like the Episcopal Church -- as was other kinds of sexual misbehavior.
Owing partly to that knowledge and partly to what I think is an evident (or, ahem, apparent) eagerness to put forward any evidence suggesting any group which doesn't advocate unrestricted sex between consenting adults in the privacy of their own Times Square MUST be all about weird sexual urges yearning to breathe free and likely to erupt at any moment ... pause to gather second wind ... I would view with great skepticism any conclusion based on appearances about us feelthy papists.
Let's think about this: The feelthy papist Church is a big and populous outfit in the world, and pretty big in the US. If we assumed that child abusers were randomly represents among all clergy of whatever kind, we'd still come up with a BUNCH of Catholic clergy engaged in pedophilia. And while camp counsellors, even Episcopalian Camp counsellors, may not make the evening news when their abuse is discovered (and certainly won't when the denomination sweeps it under the rug) do we REALLY think that our friends in the lamestream media don't find it (and present it as) especially juicy when feelthy papists are involved?
I think the data are extremely difficult to judge.
FWIW
I don't know what is owed the extremely and feloniously sinful elderly. I really just don't know. I suppose, in one sense, we owe even the virtuous little. But how Christians should respond to those among them who have really grossly and horribly failed ... the judgment comes too close to me for me to be clear about allowing them to die homeless and starving. Maybe that's what should happen to those who escape or survive prison. I just don't know.
What do we know (if anything) about the Catholic Church and about other Christian bodies elsewhere in the world?
We know that, perhaps, homosexuals made a special effort to penetrate the Latin Church where their disinterest in the opposite sex might go unnoticed, and that pedophiles tend to penetrate any institution that deals with children. We know that pedophilia infects public schools in greater numbers than the churches and private schools, and that the non-Catholic religious institutions are just as prone to abuse as the Catholic Church. I don’t know of specifics in other geographies.
As an American Catholic I care for the Catholic Church in America in a special way, this is why I singled out the American Church in my post.
I don't really “get” all of it, but I have been told that each Diocese (as US law understands it) is a corporation with one member, the bishop. It would really interesting if a Catholic bishop and lots of people in his diocese all decided to become Hare Krishnas. There would clearly be “remedies” in canon law, like the bishop would be excommunicated or somesuch. But when it gets down to real estate.... I don't know how it would come out.
My point, if any, is that viewed positively, the bonds and obligations of the Church are voluntary and charitable, and are not (these days at least) likely to be backed up by nobles with armies who see the possibility of territorial gain if they play their cards right in cooperating with the Holy See.
Also, and this is more in the explanation than excuse department, some bishops really do have a paternal affect toward their priests. As I say this does not excuse. But if it were shown to me that a child of mine had been engaged in dreadful misbehavior, while I hope I'd do what was right, I know I'd be sore tempted to protect the child.
And if people with Ph.D.s or M.D. assured me that all that my child needed was some counselling and a change of scene and the problem would probably go way — well, I HOPE I'd do better than some bishops did. But I can't guarantee it.
I was wondering if it was an especially US problem.
Well, they are guilty of one of the sins that cries out to Heaven for vengence. So part of me really doesn’t care. They made their choices are destroyed others.
But I would be willing for them to spend the rest of their lives in a monastery, making spiritual reparations for their sins. They could certianly doing jobs around the place to earn their board and keep.
They should receive prison sentences. The Vatican knows what is going on ... they are obfuscating.
What if these pileofit preists also took part in the global warming scam, still get a pension? Throw in bank robbery and NOT wearing a seat belt?
lolol
The reason the RCC wants to give these pederast priests a cushy retirment is because they believe these felons are truly "another Christ."
Therefore as "another Christ," they are entitled to whatever comforts they desire.
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