Monday, February 23, 2009

Cardinal Egan's Sins Continue to Go Unpunished

The New York Times is reporting the the Hitler Youth Pope, Benedict XVI, has named a conservative to to succeed Cardinal Edward M. Egan (pictured at right in the photo) as the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York. While Dolan may not be as morally bankrupt as Egan, he's no shining star either. The Times article describes Dolan in part as follows:
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Archbishop Dolan, . . . has earned a reputation for being convivial with parishioners and accessible to the news media, and he is not above smoking cigars with his seminarians. Yet behind the scenes, he has quietly reeled in theologians and priests who question church doctrine. And he has disappointed advocates for victims of sexual abuse, who accuse him of failing to find and remove all offenders from the ministry — though they acknowledge that he was one of few bishops to make a list of abusive priests public.
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While the article comments on Egan's sound financial stewardship of the New York archdiocese and that in retirement he will live a no doubt very comfortable life at the refractory, it completely fails to mention Egan's extremely dirty hands in terms of the sexual abuse scandal. Fortunately, the Hartford Courant fills in where the Times gives Egan a free pass yet again. Egan enabled priest who sexually abused minors and worse yet covered up cases of abuse. Sadly, Egan is all too typical of the pompous, morally corrupt leadership of the Roman Catholic Church which cares absolutely nothing about the well being of children and minors sexually victimized by clergy. Here are highlights from the Courant's coverage:
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As Cardinal Edward Egan prepares to exit the New York Archdiocese, his critics are stepping forward to remind the public of what they believe is his poor record on the clergy sex abuse crisis that has roiled the Catholic Church. "His record has just been awful and we hope that despite his retirement, victims and whistle blowers and prosecutors and journalists will continue to try and unearth his clergy sex abuse secrets in both Connecticut and New York," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
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Clohessy and others say they will be closely watching the outcome of the Connecticut court case in which The Courant and several other daily newspapers have sought the release of 12,000 pages of documents from sealed abuse lawsuits against the Bridgeport Diocese. Egan, who served as bishop of the Bridgeport diocese from 1988 to 2000, was a defendant in some of the lawsuits and fought them aggressively from 1993 until they were settled in March 2001.
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Egan faced intense criticism for his handling of some of those cases in 2002 after The Courant obtained and published sealed court depositions in which he was both defensive about the way abuse claims were handled and dismissive of victims' complaints. The Courant's investigation also found that Egan, while serving as Bridgeport's bishop, allowed several priests who were facing multiple accusations of sexual abuse to continue working, that he failed to aggressively investigate some allegations, and did not refer complaints to criminal authorities.
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A request for comment to the New York Archdiocese was not immediately answered Monday night.

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