The Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington appears to have learned a few secular lessons from corporate felons in that state. On the eve of the first trial of dozens of sex-abuse cases with hundreds of millions in potential damages, the diocese filed for bankruptcy to try to make any damages more difficult to collect. The decision by Bishop W. Francis Malooly is being attacked as an effort to reduce potential damages in the various cases moving toward trial.
The diocese is facing the cases due to a two-year moratorium on the statute of limitations passed by the legislature in 2007 — resulting in 142 alleged victims filing lawsuits. The church has now responded by filing for Chapter 11 protection. Bishop W. Francis Malooly called bankruptcy a “painful decision” but insisted that it will not only protect the church but allow payment to victims.
Lawyers for the victims, however, denounced the move as a “fraudulent tactic” designed to hide assets and accountability.
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You think it just happened here?
There has been an enormous scandal in Ireland where the Christian Brothers. a catholic group has run reform schools and orphanages for decades. $175 million in damages has already been paid, and total damages may reach nearly $2 billion.
These so called Catholics raped and beat children, forced them to work building religious trinkets in cold, poorly heated factories, and God only know what the food, or lack therof was like. A good day for the students was a day without a beating.
Google “Christian Brothers Ireland” for the gory details.
This may have also happened in Italy, there are references, but no english info.
The church is corrupt. And given the fact that the church not only hid these crimes for decades, but simply re-assigned their sex starved abusers to new locations to continue their crimes, we have to ask if the whole hierarchy is complicit. And why did they do this crimes – it sounds so similar to what happens in prison populations -where the sex starved prisoners rape to humiliate the weaker, to establish the prisoners power structure.
I hope the lawyers have a way to block the bankruptcy. Nothing would be more fitting for humanity then to see the churches under the wrecking ball. Catholics too, once they realize what the church has done, would be singing Free at Last, Free at Last, thank God almighty I am free at last”.
And for the Good Catholic people – so many of them – I can only urge you to do what I did. Leave your religion, and find a religion that is true to the meaning of Jesus life on Earth.
And to also, in your decision, remember that it was the Catholic church who gave the world the hatred of Jesus own people, the Jews. A hatred which reached its zenith when hitler, a catholic from very catholic Austria, used this hatred to gain political control of Germany. And 50 million died in mankind’s worst conflagration. While the then pope did little if anything to help the Jews. One would think that a man in such a position would simply tell the nazi’s where to go, and if he was murdered for doing that, well he would believe that he would sit at the right hand of God.
And to this day, the church has yet, as far as I know, failed to excommunicate hitler or his gang.
Don;t let their fears and guilt trips, and threats of not getting to heaven keep you in the church. For leaving it will most like be a ticket to heaven, while those who sell their very soul to the church, well, God will Judge.
FFLEO,
Even though I’m a deist and so admit the possibility of a creative force in the universe, there is no religion that in my opinion comes anywhere close to defining the nature of that force.
How can there be because in the vastness of the universe we humans count for nothing? By the same token I’m also open to the notions of life after death and ESP, but in truth I wouldn’t count on an afterlife because the logistics seem far too difficult. Yet one could have a spiritual sense of life and just as validly one could not. Where we meet mentally in this is that the minions of religion have caused most of the wars, unneeded deaths and oppression in humanity’s history, plus most of their leadership is and always has been, batshit crazy!
If they can file for bankruptcy, shouldn’t their tax exempt status be revoked? If they can use the court to avoid civil liability, I don’t understand why society should not make them pay taxes. They are spending a lot of money to lobby for abortion issues and they hide their priests from the police and they also get tax exempt status, and then when they get caught with their “hand” in the cookie jar, they file BK. Such a Christian way of dealing with their problems! WWJD?
“For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?”
–Mark 8:36
One wonders if that applies to divine institutions too?
Well if they take it back to Armenia they will find the birthplace of Christianity and if they go looking in Africa they will find what is believed in Ethiopia the alleged birthplace of man. Kinda scary for a white person, huh….
Especially if you are racist.
While the RCC is losing members among Western Europeans in Europe and the US, it is picking up many members in Africa and Asia. I don’t think the pope cares if the church is predominately based in Latin America, Africa and Asia where his authority remains largely unquestioned. AY is correct that each diocese is a separate entity.