Spotlight Shines Light on Child Abuse Scandal, Wisconsin GOP Remains Complicit

Spotlight

Update: See Sarah Larson's new piece in The New Yorker.

The systemic obscenity of priests' abuse and rape of children is featured in the powerful Academy Award nominee for best picture, Spotlight.

A brilliant chronicling by American journalism against the Church that lost Christ (Free Press, 2004) as Jimmy Breslin put it, the Archdiocese of Boston is exposed by old-school journalism against the astonishing narcissism and indifference of perpetrators praying on children on a massive scale.

Gripping, powerful and the most important film in decades, Spotlight has this home's hopes for best picture for the Oscar this weekend.

With respect to Wisconsin citizens in heavily Catholic Wisconsin, Spotlight ought to serve as a reminder to the collaborators and the particular viciousness of the Milwaukee Archdiocese that you are not forgotten, forgiven and cannot hide.

No spoilers here for Spotlight.

The scope and moral depravity of the Catholic Church became arguably the leading investigative story of the last 20 years.

A look at The Boston Globe's coverage of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the
movie "Spotlight," which is based on the stories and the reporters behind the investigation.

Almost every state was implicated.

And the Republican Party protected child abuse in collusion with the Cardinal (former Archbishop) Timothy Dolan, including current Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R) who worked to protect pedophile priests and against victims, (Talking Points Memo, One Wisconsin Now and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa and Wisconsin legislative Republicans who blocked a child victims' rights bill numerous times in service to rightwing cabals then holding sway in the Catholic Church, (Frontline).

No matter how often Wisconsin State Sen. Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point) introduces or sponsors a new Child Victims Act every session, Wisconsin legislative Republicans block it. Don't look for simple decency from Wisconsin Republicans and Scot Walker anytime soon.

In 2014 Pope Francis met with six victims of abuse, comparing the abuse of children at the hands of Catholic priests to the performing of a satanic black mass:

'Before God and his people, I express my sorrow for the sins and grave crimes of clerical sexual abuse committed against you,' Francis said during his homily, according to a text released by the Vatican. 'And I humbly ask forgiveness I beg your forgiveness, too, for the sins of omission on the part of church leaders who did not respond adequately to reports of abuse made by family members, as well as by abuse victims themselves.'(Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests]

A leading advocate for survivors of Catholic priests, Patrick J. Wall of Jeff Anderson and Associates of St. Paul, Minnesota, expressed a show-me attitude towards the Pope's stated commitment to holding bishops accountable for covering up crimes against 1,000s of children worldwide.

"If the Holy Father does not fire the Bishops and Abbots who have been complicit in covering up child sexual abuse by the Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Deacons and Religious, then he simply is a Jesuit using roman tactics of smoke and mirrors," said Wall in an email.

I think Pope Francis is for real, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), and every lousy bastard in the Milwaukee Archdiocese will face justice.

See below, in service to history, Ron Johnson testifying against the Wisconsin Child Abuse victims bill, Ron Johnson opposing Child Victims Act in Wisconsin just 10 months before being elected to the office of U.S. senator:

Pope Francis Could Order Listecki to Open Archdiocese of Milwaukee Operation to Its Victims

U.S. Senator (R-Wisconsin), Ron
Johnson Opposed
Wisconsin Child Victims Bill
giving legal protection
against Predator Priests

Update: See also piece on the now-retired Twin Cities Archbishop Harry Flynn, " one-time head of the US bishops child sex abuse panel called police about admitted, proven or credibly accused predator priests."
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One would believe that children raped and molested is a horrendous crime that both major political parties would agree merits holding the perpetrators to account and pay the victims restitution, such as restitution can be.

Not in this life.

The Catholic Church hierarchy is maintaining its hostile stance towards rape and molestation victims, knowing the Republican Party [see Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and his work against rape victims for example] and judges such as Rudolph Randa have the church's back as both operations inflict a shared misogyny and absolute prohibition against a woman's right to choose what to do with her body.

If anyone needs to see more evidence that the Republican Party and the Catholic Church hierarchy have fallen deep into nihilism and organized criminality, the latest out of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee should awaken decent Americans.

In the federal case, Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors v. Listecki, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit questioned attorneys this week for defending a $60 million cemetery trust fund crafted by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee to shield money from victims of priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

A federal bankruptcy judge ruled in January 2013 that efforts by Listecki to insulate the $60 million from victims did not, as the church claims, violate "the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 ... and the First Amendment." [Case No. 11-20059-svk, Chapter 11, Adv. Proc. No. 11-02459  UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN
485 B.R. 385; 2013 Bankr. LEXIS 200; 57 Bankr. Ct. Dec. 119]

Judge Rudolph Randa disagreed and overruled the federal bankruptcy judge in defense of  Listecki in July 2013.

Randa's decision, a corrupt decision, drew derisive criticism across the nation from survivors and their advocates. (Goodstein, NYT)

Writes Goodstein:

The ruling reversed an earlier decision by a federal bankruptcy judge and was a victory for Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, and for his predecessor, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, who established the cemetery trust in Milwaukee in 2007. Documents made public in July revealed that when Cardinal Dolan sought the Vatican’s permission to move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust, he said it would help protect the money from legal claims.

This week a panel of the Court of Appeal for the Seventh Circuit excoriated the machinations of the slippery church and its defenders such as Randa and questioned Randa's conflict of interest, calling it "troubling."

Randa won't lose any sleep over the accusation.

As reported by Annysa Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Judges at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday appeared to challenge a key argument in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's efforts to protect $60 million it holds in a trust for the care of cemeteries from being used to pay creditors in its bankruptcy.

The three-judge panel questioned whether the archdiocese needs that entire $60 million to maintain its cemeteries. And one of the jurists, 7th Circuit Judge Ann Claire Williams, said she found issues related to U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa's decision not to recuse himself from the lawsuit over those funds 'troubling.'

The panel — Appellate Judges Williams and Joel Flaum, along with U.S. District Judge Robert Dow of the Northern District of Illinois — heard oral arguments Monday on several issues related to the bankruptcy, including First Amendment questions that could be of national significance as religious liberty cases make their way through courts around the country.

In that lawsuit, filed by Archbishop Jerome Listecki as sole trustee of the cemetery trust, the church maintains that forcing it to turn over even $1 in cemetery funds to the bankruptcy estate would substantially burden its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Proceeds from the estate would go to finance a settlement with sex abuse victims and the archdiocese's reorganization.

Randa is more than troubling.

And Pope Francis could settle this matter in a Vatican minute, if his conversion to decency and humanism were more than a slick PR job.

Lay Catholics face a decision on what to do about the Catholic Church hierarchy, a historic decision.

SNAP - Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

UN Committee Against Torture Summons Vatican on Priests' Sexual Violence

Update: See also U.N. Panel on Torture Presses Vatican Envoy on Abuse (Cumming-Bruce, New York Times):

"In the hearing, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva, immediately found himself at odds with members of the panel, the Committee Against Torture, over the Holy See’s view that it is responsible for applying the treaty only to the few hundred inhabitants of the Vatican City state."

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) reports the Vatican has been summoned to appear to before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to address the torture and rape of children by Catholic priests, covered up by the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Today, the Vatican was summoned to appear before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to report on its record in preventing, punishing and redressing torture, which necessarily included its record addressing widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church.  Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and their attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) were in attendance.  In April, CCR, representing SNAP, filed a report with the Committee documenting the long-term harms suffered by survivors of sexual violence by Catholic clergy, and filed a supplemental report thereafter focusing primarily on Latin America.  This is the second time in four months that top Catholic officials have been called before the U.N. to account for the Vatican’s human rights record on addressing the ongoing worldwide crisis of sexual violence and cover-ups within the Catholic Church.

The next time we read of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York meeting with, and praising Jeb Bush (CBS News), or Sen, Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) running interference for the child rape and molestation scandal in opposition to the Child Victims Act (Bice, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), we should consider why.

The Republican Party and the Catholic Church hierarchy have formed a repulsive alliance out of political and legal necessity.

Dolan, the entire hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee - past and present - should be summoned as well.