There's Enough Blame For Everyone

By now, we have all heard of how bad things really are for the Milwaukee Catholic Diocese, and the stunning revelations about the cover up that was involved in it. Now, Whallah! will not go into denigrating the Catholic Church. I firmly believe in coexisting and that everyone has a right to chose how they practice their religious beliefs, as well as if they even have religious beliefs.

But has horrifying as the abuse suffered by the victims truly is, the tragedy is only being compounded by how some people are reacting to it.

Sykes is leading the way, by pointing out the crimes that were committed by Archbishop Rembert Weakland. On his show he also blasts former Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann for his role in trying to sweep these assaults under the rug.

Whallah! agrees with Sykes on these condemnations. That said, we must also say we agree with the Brew City Brawler, who points out that Archbishop Dolan is not to be abolved of the role he played in the obscenity:

Let the Brawler make sure he has this straight:

Archbishop Timothy Dolan booted the pedophile Franklyn Becker out of the priesthood.

He paid him $10,000 -- with no limits on how the money should be spent. He sent him to Mayfield Mayville-- he informed the sheriff but not the neighborhoods or the community. And he didn't provide for counseling.

And now, per Peter Isely, the Midwest director of the Surivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Becker is living in an apartment with a view overlooking a playground?

And somehow Dolan's going to skate on this?

That would appear to be the case as of 12:03 a.m. (late night for the housework-tasked Brawler). The name Dolan appears not once in the Journal Sentinel story
about the scandal that appears due for Friday's paper.

Now, the Brawler fully expects the amoral likes of Charlie Sykes to politicize this, to say "Look what happened under Rembert" while saying Dolan has done an "extraordinarily good job in trying to clean up this mess."

Charlie says that a lot of people are in denial about what transpired under the liberal Rembert Weakland. And when he says people he means liberals. To which the Brawler says: prove it.

The Brawler says let the Lord have mercy on Rembert for what happened under his watch. The Brawler, being human, brooks no excuses.

But the suggestion that Dolan is somehow above the mess is absurd.

And for those of Charlie's dumb ass commenters that are trying to insist that this is only a display of homosexuality, they need to remember that it was not only priest-on-boy abuse that was happening in the Church. Furthermore, they also need to be aware that sexual assault is rarely about the sex, but the control, and can happen in any sexual combination.

And being just as egregious, McIlheran focuses on the cost to the Church, indicating that the Church shouldn't be made to pay for something that happened decades ago. Leave it to him to put money before people's very lives. He should be ashamed of himself for even writing this post. And I feel safe to say, that I bet that the victims would have been glad to forego any money they might receive in order to have never been abused in the first place.

UPDATE: The Brawler provides us with some more history of Dolan's involvement in the cover up and his shortcomings in addressing the issue here, and he also takes McIlheran to task for his misplaced priorities here.