NYT, 12/3/09
In Egan’s Depositions, a New View of a Sex Scandal
The deposition was in its fifth
grueling hour. The lawyer and the witness had dueled over the meaning
of common words, about whether an executive “supervises” or
“administers,” about the difference between a lie and a failure to tell
the truth.
Then the lawyer sprang his big question: You could have prevented someone from hurting people and you decided not to. Why?
The witness was Edward M. Egan,
then the Roman Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. The question was
about a priest who had been accused of sexually molesting children.
“I didn’t make a decision one way or the other,” said Bishop Egan,
whom the lawyer suggested had failed to act quickly against the cleric.
“I kept working on it until I resolved the decision.”
The exchange is one of hundreds recorded in a vast trove of
documents the Diocese of Bridgeport made public on Tuesday after
battling in court for seven years to keep them sealed. The archive —
more than 12,000 pages of memos, church records and testimony — was
gathered for 23 lawsuits, alleging sexual abuse of children by seven
priests, that the diocese settled in 2002.
At the heart of it lies the bishop’s testimony, in two wide-ranging
depositions from 1997 and 1999. Punctuated by legal parsing and
frequent exasperation on both sides, transcripts of the videotaped
sessions show the man who would become one of the church’s most
prominent American leaders — the archbishop of New York, and a cardinal
— as he navigated a budding scandal that still threatens the church’s
finances and reputation.
Since 2002, when he moved to New York and nationwide attention
focused on the church hierarchy’s handling of abuse complaints,
Cardinal Egan has faced troubling accusations about his tenure in
Bridgeport: that he allowed priests facing multiple sex abuse
allegations to continue working; that he did not refer complaints to
criminal authorities; and that he showed little interest in meeting
with accusers.
[Read the rest here.]
The lovely images of the Blessed Mother that now appear on this blog's banner appear courtesy of our friends at Villanova, where they are enjoying a beautiful new building and chapel. The chapel's stained-glass window was designed by Fr. Richard Cannuli, OSA. His website is
here.
The Baltimore City Council is requiring crisis pregnancy centers to put up signs making clear that they do not provide abortions or birth control. I do not support such a mandate from the government, but I do wonder, should crisis pregnancy centers be making the nature of their services clear on their own, or is deception part of their mission in that it gives them the best chance to gain a hearing for their pro-life message? Should deception be a legitimate part of the pro-life cause?
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