Down and Out in Milwaukee

Damn, I feel bad about it. I mean, I know how it is to be broke, having lost my job a couple years ago. Sure, I get by with a few teaching gigs, selling some (very few) books, and the occasional odd job—but job security? Insurance? Paid vacations? 401K plans? Ah, happy days….

So I sympathize, I really do, with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee because guess what? They’re broke, too! And not only that, but they’ve had to pay a cartload of money in attorney fees—the Miami Herald says the tab adds up to 12 million bucks just to declare themselves broke. Think that’s bad? WISN.com puts the figure at 19 million.

So they’re scrounging—just getting by, those good guys in the Roman collars up there in cold Milwaukee. Had to take out a mortgage in 2006 on the Lake Michigan headquarters. Tried to find you a picture of it, but all I could find was Google Map. Take a look!

Well, they got the mortgage to pay off ten pesky victims of sexual abuse in 2006—settlement was almost 16.7 million. And now the headquarters is underwater—no, not the lake, but the debt is higher than the value of the property.

So of course the then archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy A. Dolan—now Cardinal of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and everybody’s favorite—had to do a smooth move, which he did. He wrote off to Rome in 2007 asking permission to transfer almost 57 million dollars to a cemetery fund. And—as revealed last summer…well, here’s The New York Times:

“I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” The Vatican approved the request in five weeks, the files show.

OK—let’s take the tongue out of the cheek. Five weeks? FIVE FRIGGING WEEKS! When I, following the several cases of misconduct, have routinely seen correspondence about abusive priests between bishops and the Vatican that extends for DECADES! One of the worst abusers in the Catholic church, Marcial Maciel—a guy who actually had six children by two women, suffered from morphine addiction, and abused at least nine boys—never got thrown out of the church at all. Nor, by the way, did he ever apologize. So five weeks to approve a money transfer in 2007? That’s fucking outrageous.

Well, they may have acted so swiftly because of words that Dolan had written to Ratzinger in 2003; were the words still ringing through the chambers of the Vatican?

“As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real,” he wrote in such a request in 2003 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office charged with handling abuse cases until he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

So almost 57 million bucks were transferred to a fund for cemeteries. And then what happened? Predictably, in 2011, the archdiocese declared bankruptcy, joining ten other dioceses around the country to have done so in the last ten years.

But that settlement for the 16.7 million-buck settlement back in 2006? It was just for paying off the victims of two priests. The real scope of the problem was much bigger:

At least 45 Milwaukee priests face sex abuse accusations. One priest in particular was accused of personally molesting close to 200 deaf boys.  

So all of those victims—well, some of them—got together and filed a civil suit. And then what happened. Here’s The New York Times again:

Since then, negotiations between the two sides in Milwaukee have broken down: the church has argued that about 400 of the 575 cases are invalid, while lawyers for the victims have accused the church of hiding assets.

Hiding assets would mean that transfer to the cemetery fund: very logically, the victims of abuse went to court, alleging that the transfer was—in legal terms—a fraudulent conveyance. At first, they got a bankruptcy judge to agree that it was, then a U.S. District judge—Rudolph T. Randa—came out in July of 2013 and said the deal was kosher, citing the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Obviously, liberal minds were appalled: here’s thinkprogress.com:

Randa concludes that the church has a constitutional right to shield its funds. By raising his opinion to constitutional status, Randa effectively strips Congress of its ability to correct his sweeping interpretation of the law.  

(Oh, by the way, Randa’s parents and many relatives are buried in Milwaukee Catholic cemeteries—but that wasn’t, he felt, a cause for recusing himself…)

OK—so we’ve gotten up to last summer. Today? Well, the archdiocese came up two days ago with a plan to pay 4 million bucks to the 125 victims that it admits were abused. Right—so where is this relatively trivial sum coming from? Here’s Yahoo News:

The archdiocese will raise $2 million in a loan from a cemetery trust fund created under New York Cardinal and former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Yup, Dear Reader, the archdiocese is proposing to pay two million dollars out of the same fund into which they had transferred 57 million dollars seven years earlier.

It is a brazen as it is depraved. And both the depravity and the brazenness have been taken to astronomical, never-before-heard-of, proportions.

A Man of God and Catholicism Lite

Three men of God, three men speaking their views on gay people. Which strikes me as a bit odd—has anyone come around and asked Ricky Martin, say, or Anderson Cooper their views on religion? At any rate, we have the pope on record—he’s a sinner, he said, as we all are. And who is he to judge gay people? Here’s his quote, as it appeared in The New York Times:

In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are “socially wounded” because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro, I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: “Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?” We must always consider the person.

OK—it’s a step. It’s better than Benedict, who tended to couple the word “homosexuality” with the phrase “intrinsically evil,” or the like. And we all took the bait—hey, after all those years of Ratzinger, we’re yearning for a pope who gets it, who starts moving the church forward.

And he certainly seems different—living in the guest house, driving a Ford escort, eschewing the pomp that was Benedict’s lifeblood and focusing on the poor. But how liberal is this pope? Here are his views on women, from the same interview:

I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of “female machismo,” because a woman has a different makeup than a man. But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo. Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed. The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church. Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity. We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of the church.

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there confused about that first sentence, and the reference to “female machismo?” I think what he’s saying is something like, “insisting that men and women are equals and should be able to hold the same positions is wrong. Women and men are intrinsically different, and no, dears, no priesthood or God forbid papacy for you!”

And am I the only one who is thoroughly sick of the church’s trotting out Mary every time women raise legitimate questions or demands? Partly because as I understand it, biblically speaking, Mary isn’t an especially likeable character—nor does she seem to figure very prominently in the life of Jesus. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

There is also an incident in which Jesus is sometimes interpreted as rejecting his family. "And his mother and his brothers arrived, and standing outside, they sent in a message asking for him^[Mk 3:21] ... And looking at those who sat in a circle around him, Jesus said, 'These are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.'"

But all this veneration of Mary seems to come with the message: we’re perfectly happy to put you on a pedestal, but not in the priesthood. And notice as well that the pope’s “liberal” views on homosexuality don’t go that far, he hardly comes out and says, “both gay and straight people were made in God’s image, both of their loves are of equal worth, and gay people will have the same rights and privileges as heterosexuals in the Catholic church, including marriage.”

Nonetheless, everybody is jumping on the bandwagon, including the Reverend Timothy M. Dolan, the Archbishop of New York. Here he is, courtesy of The New York Times:

After Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal Dolan, who has himself softened his language on homosexuality in the past year, likened the pope to the Yankees’ retiring relief pitcher: “I think he’s our Mariano Rivera. He’s a great relief to all of us.”

Ummmm, this is a guy who said the following to The New York Times during Holy Week this year:

“Well, the first thing I’d say to them is: ‘I love you, too. And God loves you. And you are made in God’s image and likeness. And — and we — we want your happiness. But — and you’re entitled to friendship,’” Cardinal Dolan said. “But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that — especially when it comes to sexual love — that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally.”

Yeah? This sounds suspiciously like all those people whose views are “evolving,” and can’t we say it, at last. “Evolving” simply means not sticking your neck out until it’s absolutely imperative—failure to do so will make you look like a complete hypocrite. Great—now we know that God loves us, as well as the Cardinal, but sex with a person of the same gender is a sin.

The person who gets it? Gene Robinson, who just about caused a schism in the church, when he became the first openly gay bishop. And as you’ll see in the clip below, he doesn’t mince words: we’ve done a lot of damage to gay people, and we’re gonna have to work hard to repair the damage. There’s a reason why LGBT people are suspicious and angry. He comes out and says it to a group of Presbyterians who will be giving out glasses of water at the Gay Pride march later in the day: “You are representing the community of Christians, Jews and Muslims who are 95% of the repression we LGBT people have experienced in our lives.”

Or how about, “you are the oppressor offering the cup of water to the oppressed?” Robinson doesn’t pull the punches, or—perhaps a better image—hesitate to go into the temple and lecture to the money lenders. Nor—from the faces of the stony Presbyterians—is his message better received.

And Robinson is out there, walking the talk—passing out the cups of water to drag queens, scantily-clad boys, street performers, and the just-general-folk who drift by.

For all the talk of not focusing on abortion, homosexuality, contraception—what are we hearing? A sort of Catholicism of Nice—we won’t talk about it, we won’t judge, now come into the church but please, lower your voices, don’t rock the boat, no demands.

Congratulations—the Catholic Church has progressed to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.