Cardinal Dolan’s Payments to Pedophiles
Cardinal Dolan is listed, as of this writing, as among the invited and confirmed speakers for the Values Voters Summit, the premier annual political conference of the Religious Right. Held in September, it is sponsored by such leading groups as The Family Research Council and AFA Action, the political arm of The American Family Association.
Dolan is among those who have been invited but have not yet confirmed. He joins an impressive roster of conservative movement leaders, GOP politicians and Fox News celebrities. While the final mix will undoubtedly be different than the current page, I can’t help but wonder whether the invitation will be quietly withdrawn or perhaps, quietly declined.
The reason for such a discreet move might be the extraordinary recent story about how when Dolan was Bishop of Milwaukee, prior to his promotion to New York, he paid off priests accused of child sex abuse with as much a $20,000 to leave the priesthood.
The New York Times recently reported:
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.