Instead of repenting, the Roman Church spends millions to protect pedophile priests
Sep 01, 2018
These articles are from 2016, which is fairly recent but not part of today’s breaking news. It shows how the Roman church has been working to save itself from having to pay damages for the sins of pedophile priests. Their money-saving program comes at the expense of the victims.
ALBANY — Not leaving it to divine chance, the state Catholic Conference has turned in recent years to some of Albany's most well-connected and influential lobby firms to help block a bill that would make it easier for child sex abuse victims to seek justice.
The Catholic Conference, headed by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, has used Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, Patricia Lynch & Associates, Hank Sheinkopf, and Mark Behan Communications to lobby against the Child Victims Act as well as for or against other measures.
All told, the conference spent more than $2.1 million on lobbying from 2007 through the end of 2015, state records show. That does not include the conference's own internal lobbying team.
Filings show the lobbyists were retained, in part, to work on issues associated with "statute of limitations" and "timelines for commencing certain civil actions related to sex offenses." Other issues included parochial school funding and investment tax credits.
"They are willing to spend limitless money in order to basically keep bad guys from being accountable for their actions," said Melanie Blow, chief operations officer of the Stop Abuse Campaign. "I think they're doing it because they don't want to have to pay out settlements."
See also this article about the Child Victims Act referred to in the above article:
New York's statute of limitations bars victims of childhood sexual abuse from filing criminal charges or civil claims after their 23rd birthday. Victim advocates say it is one of the most restrictive in the nation.
Supporters of the Child Victims Act say the Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of church's bishops, has been the bill's biggest obstacle. The CVA — one of a handful of bills under consideration — would eliminate the civil and criminal statutes of limitation for victims.
The article says that Cardinal Timothy Dolan didn’t want to discuss the issue yet, but the problem is that time was running out for many victims to file charges against pedophile priests because of restrictive laws in New York.
No doubt the Cardinal knew that the longer he could delay things, the less money the church would have to pay out in damages to its victims. True repentance, of course, shows a heart-felt desire to make restitution, as we see in the biblical case of Zaccheus, who gladly paid fourfold for defrauding people in their taxes (Luke 19:8). Jesus responded, “Today salvation has come to this house.”
I wish we could say the same about the Roman Church.