The Provincial Emails: No bishops were harmed in the bankrupting of this Archdiocese

My temptation is to ask how our Archdiocese of Milwaukee can be filing for bankruptcy (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, New York Times) when only weeks ago Bishop Richard Sklba said in the print version of this Catholic Herald interview,

"My temptation is to say 'Tell me what we did wrong.' In that time and place. 'Tell me what we did wrong,'" he said.

His claim is that our Archdiocese's handling of abuse cases was state of the art, and those who say otherwise are unfairly applying hindsight.

I assume his challenge to be told otherwise was not merely rhetorical. Peter Isely and Jim Smith in The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee include this case.

It was an “open secret” that Fr. Dennis Pecore, a priest with the Society of the Divine Savior religious order who was assigned to Milwaukee’s Mother of Good Counsel parish and grade school, was sexually abusing boys at the parish and the school.

In July of 1984, a teacher who was alarmed by the priest’s behavior of routinely taking boys to his bedroom wrote to Archbishop Weakland urging action before “it goes public.” Archbishop Weakland wrote back, “Any libelous material found in your letter will be scrutinized carefully by our lawyers.”

Frustrated, the teacher and two others continued to write the archdiocese, warning of the danger Pecore posed to children. All three were fired.

While it might well be shown this was consistent with our Archdiocese's standard operating procedures in handling abuse cases, it was not state of the art handling. It also indicates that, in fact, bankruptcy is primarily being used to forestall Milwaukee's present and former bishops having to testify. Our Archdiocesan newspaper's brief report includes that

According to Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki, the decision to file “is occurring because priest-perpetrators sexually abused minors, going against everything the Church and the priesthood represent.”

One need only recall the case of Father Pecore to be reminded that it was the acts and omissions of our bishops in handling these cases, rather than the underlying acts of priests, that lead to this bankruptcy filing.

 The Provincial Emails

Worth mentioning is the fact the Milwaukee Catholic Herald ran a thirty-two page tribute to Bishop Sklba in an issue last month.  Ummmm, that is lacking a bit of prudence I think. Sklba helped enable many predatory priests in abuse of children.  How could abuse victims be blamed for leaving the Church or wanting to destroy Her in Milwaukee with this type of sh*t shenanigans going on.  The Archdiocese doesn't need to hang Sklba out to dry either, but a 32 page tribute where he arrogantly and publicly touts doing no wrong?  Sheesh!  That is just terrible!