Not a bastion of moral integrity, if ever it was. There are good and decent Roman Catholics in the congregations ... but the institution of the Roman Catholic Church itself is not a democratic institution, rather it is an incredibly authoritarian theocracy -- and like a fish, the rot starts at the head.
MILWAUKEE | Mon Jul 1, 2013 11:27pm EDT
(Reuters) - Roman Catholic Church officials in Milwaukee vigorously shielded pedophile priests and protected church funds from lawsuits during a decades-long sex abuse scandal, according to hundreds of documents released on Monday.
This is another case of the Roman Catholic Church using bankruptcy as a dodge to protect the church's vast vault from "any legal claim and liability" on behalf of victims of sexual abuse by priests, by moving $57 million into a cemetery trust fund. The Milwaukee diocese is the eighth American diocese to declare bankruptcy, the first three filed in 2004 in Portland, Oregon; Tucson, Arizona; and Spokane, Washington.
In one case of sexual abuse, the Milwaukee diocese caused Reverend Raymond Adamsky to receive counseling and then transferred him to 11 parishes in 34 years before he was finally sent to serve as nursing home chaplain with restrictions on contact with minors -- after he was accused of molestation in 1961 and then again in 1983.
A similar case in the archdiocese of Los Angeles, a $660 million settlement was reached as a result of hundreds of sex abuse lawsuits. So far, the Los Angeles Archdiocese settlement appears to be the largest in America.
And, at the very top, the Vatican, the Pope, rumors abound that Benedict XVI may have been obliged to resign under the weight of numerous scandals within the Vatican itself, ranging from inappropriately acting on the the sex abuse accusations ranging in the church worldwide, to document leaking by the Pope's butler, to the very slippers that Pope Benedict XVI wore.
In examining the ruling structure of the Church from its top to the parish priest at bottom, I cannot possibly see how the Church can claim in any way to be an arbiter of morality.