This pops up in the middle of a Chi Trib story about relieving financial worries of sued dioceses:
“Many of the bishops basically abandoned their responsibilities to their flock, and why should we now have confidence in them that they will not do so in the future?” said Robert Bennett, a Washington lawyer and former head of the bishops’ National Review Board. “Enough time has not gone by yet.”
He is brother of Bill, by the way, and former lawyer for then-Pres. Clinton. Well-connected, that is, and presumably very sharp guy. He and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke have similar tales to tell, I’m sure, of the irresponsibility of bishops, she having headed the same committee and learned more than she wanted to know about those shepherds — as Tom Roeser reported for The Wanderer:
Anne Burke will always remember one session out-of-town with a nationally famous bishop who gave her complete assurance that all instances of sexual hanky-panky were brought to a dead halt in his diocese. The next morning she opened a newspaper and found that the bishop was on the front page, having welcomed a priest-sexual predator as a house guest. She called the bishop. “Yesterday you assured me that all matters involving the diocese had been cleaned up,” she said. “You know, you lied to me, didn’t you?” He said the priest was being used for a theological research job. She continued, “You lied to me, didn’t you.” “No, I didn’t.” “Well, the priest you hired was convicted.” “No he wasn’t.” “Really?” “He pled guilty. That’s what happened.” “Same thing.” “Well, not exactly-pleading guilty is not the same as being tried and found guilty.”
Burke smiled at that effort at the futile attempt to apply theological hair-splitting to the law. It may make it in a university theological seminar but not in a courtroom. “Why did he try to snow me?” she said to this reporter. “Did he think he could get away with it because-well, he didn’t.” Later she received a denunciatory letter from a bishop who said she was rude in some of her discussions with his colleagues. Then it became clear that she would never be given the title of Chairman but would continue as “interim Chairman.”
A delicate rebuke. One must not be rude to bishops for any reason. When reminded that she never graduated from the interim title, Burke just smiles. Rude or just following the mandate the bishops gave her, Anne Burke sat at her Supreme Court desk in Chicago last week and showed this Wanderer reporter another angry letter-like an earlier one, also from the Archbishop of Hartford, Henry J. Mansell which ripped the Board for “expanding their competence, responsibilities, activities and studies in a dynamic of autonomy.” A very tough letter. It concluded “Be assured of our continued rayers and best wishes.”
Anne Burke smiled quietly and said, “Continued prayers. How touching.”
Blogged with Flock
Blithe Spirit 
Reader D: You quoted something yesterday about Paprocki’s talk to lawyers on church pay-outs to victims of naughty priests. I seem to recall that either the Vatican or the upcoming bishops’ conference is going to address the accountability factor in paying out huge sums of diocesan cash in such cases. Either that it has to be OK’d by a church oversight committee or something along those lines. I suppose there are legal/canon law ways to avoid giving away the store just because you have a store, in order to compensate for pain and suffering. Who says $10 million makes the memory go away better than $1 million? In the meantime the faithful who had nothing to do with the case have to make up the deficit. It makes one feel so much like the lowly U.S. tax payer.
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