If among the living, Joe Paterno would not warrant a presidential audience. Why then, is Cardinal Timothy Dolan receiving both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Oct. 18 at the Al Smith Dinner in New York City?
The stated goals of the dinner are to encourage civility and dialogue. Whether a dinner impacts our nation’s politics is, to say the least, debatable, but the dinner will fulfill a separate goal: illustrating America’s blind eye toward the most disgusting acts by anyone titled “reverend” or “father.”
Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Joe Paterno share the same shriveled conscience toward victims of their institutions, only Dolan makes Paterno’s work at Penn State look, excuse the term, like child’s play.
Like Paterno, Dolan learned of possible rampant rape and torture of children by men in his organization. Dolan responded with the same indifference to justice, the same disregard for future victims, and the same self-preserving silence Paterno embodied. Unlike Paterno, Dolan took the step from the gutter to the sewer.
To secure his priests’ silent departure from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Dolan made an offer they couldn’t refuse. $20,000, a monthly $1,250 pension and health insurance until the men earned new employment — and new children to terrorize — in exchange for voluntary defrocking, a process called laicization.
When confronted with these facts, Dolan of course lied to the press. Minutes from an Archdiocese of Milwaukee meeting on March 7, 2003 confirmed Dolan authorized the payments. How many of the accused received this payment is unknown, though two confirmed recipients exist. One, Franklyn Becker, himself had ten accusers and a 1983 diagnosis of pedophilia. Dolan rationalized subsidizing Becker as “charity.”Archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski confirmed the payments as hush money and Dolan a liar.
If Friedrich Nietzsche impregnated Ayn Rand, the expelled child would be Cardinal Dolan. His self-preserving amorality is matched only by his cynical use of Catholicism. It should surprise no one this man also fought statute of limitations reform in both Milwaukee and New York, perceiving changes to aid victims as, what else, an attack on the church. Joe Paterno in a steroid inspired rage could never reach the callous low of Cardinal Dolan’s existence.
There is one way the Al Smith Dinner could serve our nation. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney could take our country’s religious blinders off and boycott any event Cardinal Dolan attends. It’s time our country and its faithful quit defending the wicked among their own and replace the Timothy Dolans, the Tony Perkinses, and the Ralph Reeds of our world with leaders whose religion helps humanity.
Brian Marceau can be reached at [email protected]