Read the full article here.
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee...
...a document unearthed during bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and made public by victims’ advocates reveals that the archdiocese did make such payments to multiple accused priests to encourage them to seek dismissal, thereby allowing the church to remove them from the payroll.
A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed on Wednesday that payments of as much as $20,000 were made to “a handful” of accused priests “as a motivation” not to contest being defrocked. The process, known as “laicization,” is a formal church juridical procedure that requires Vatican approval, and can take far longer if the priest objects.
I personally think that a key fact that is missing here is that $20,000 is less, on average, of what a priest makes per year. Take into account that in some dioceses priest have to pay rent or mortgage for Church property as well as their own bills and expenses, and what we have here is chump change in light of the fact that these sexually abusive priests where "paid out."
The fact that the writer of this article mentioned but failed to go into detail the about the lengthiness of the laicization process is a bit telling, especially due to the fact that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1988, 17 years before becoming Pope, actually made it easier to laicize priest who are accused of wrongful conduct!
An employer paying out an employee for wrongfull misconduct isn't cause for scandalization, unless of course, it's the Catholic Church that's doing it, right? This goes to show just how far some anti-Catholics will go in order to paint the Church and Her works in a negative and destructive light.
Awesome!
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