Bend those pretzels ye Catholic sharia lovers!

8,000 instances of abuse alleged in Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy hearing!

In an emotional preamble to her ruling, before a packed courtroom, Judge Kelley expressed a reverence for the Catholic Church and compassion for the victims, saying she was "brought to tears more than once" reading the accounts of the men and women who allege they were sexually abused as children by priests, deacons, nuns, teachers and others over the past 60 years.

"But I cannot let compassion be the basis for my decision. It must be governed by law," Kelley said.
LAW will govern this statutes of limitations sued as remedies against being held culpable for crimes.
Now her remedy was correct from where I stand unless lawyers prove that NYC Archbishop Dolan screwed with the books. If he did I want to see the creep in an Orange Cassock!

"The lawyer, Jeffrey R. Anderson, who represents clients in 23 lawsuits against the Milwaukee Archdiocese, said $75 million disappeared from the church’s investments in 2005. He said that $55 million more that had previously been unaccounted for appeared in a cemetery trust in 2008, and that the archdiocese claimed that money in that fund was protected by state law and could not be used for payouts. In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Anderson said that the first transfer coincided with a 2005 ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that allowed abuse lawsuits to proceed despite a statute of limitations. He said the second transfer occurred around the time of a similar ruling in 2007. Archbishop Dolan led the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009, when he was chosen to lead the Archdiocese of New York."

Last month the Milwaukee Archdiocese declared bankruptcy, a move being taken by several other dioceses in the face of similar lawsuits.
A remedy used to jeep in Incorporated Dioceses from having to sell off it's properties & holding to pay for the wrond doings of the Incorporated entity.

Oh we of little faith, 'eh.

...who needs birth control while raping children anyway. All is good.

Where's the surprise? There are millions of $$$ to protect doncha know?

From wizbang, "The 1982 bankruptcy of Johns-Manville was a landmark asbestos tort case, as it helped define the precedent of a defendant company setting up an "asbestos trust fund" to pay victims of asbestosis and mesothelioma, followed by Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization to ensure that the company stayed in business and was able to continue making contributions to the trust fund."

Courtesy of Elizabeth Warren's efforts. I wonder if Ms. Warren has moved to the church's payroll.

I'm agreeing with your premise labrea and you curse at me? Do you even recall the thread I referenced where I was outraged that victims were screwed over by JM - not so different than these victims being screwed over by the church?

Losers.

The 1986 court order that was at the heart of the Supreme Court appeal on which Warren worked blocked attempts by victims to sue Travelers Insurance after the establishment of Johns-Manville�fs asbestos trust fund. Travelers Insurance had already paid out over $100,000,000 to claimants before the trust fund had been established. The order prevented �gany person from commencing any actions based upon, arising out of, or related to insurance policies that Travelers issued to Manville.�h The legality of this court order came under question via Federal appellate court (and ended up in front of the SCOTUS) after several Johns-Manville plaintiffs attempted to avoid the lengthy trust fund claims process by filing �edirect action�e lawsuits against Travelers Insurance in the early 2000��s.

In Warren�fs defense, trust fund settlements and the bankruptcy process were crucial in preserving the financial assets of asbestos defendants. To the extent that the fallibility of our legal process allows, the system �eworked�f in that it prevented companies from simply liquidating their assets and vanishing without compensating the victims of their negligence. And enforcing bankruptcy agreements is an important part of this system:

Supporting the finality of bankruptcy court rulings is hardly an anti-asbestos victim stance. If insurers like Traveller�fs don�ft think that the deal they strike as part of a bankruptcy case will be honored, they won�ft cut deals. And the result will be that asbestos victims will face years of litigation and maybe no better outcome.

�c Warren�fs involvement in the appeal is not even evidence that she�fs anti-asbestos victims. I vividly remember as a student in Professor Warren�fs bankruptcy class the great personal sympathy she has for asbestos victims when discussing the problems of dealing with mass torts in the bankruptcy system. She took great pains to make sure the class understood what a particularly terrible death mesothelioma causes.

Not that Johns Mansville is what is or should be discussed. Just a way for Paulines to get a dig in at Elizabeth Warren. Pay attention to the second and third paragraphs above. It's important. But this legal situation is not comparable to a diocese declaring bankruptcy to get out of paying rape victims.

Please pay attention to the OP.

Now, back to the subject. Here's one of these child abusers, Lawrence C. Murphy, and how he got away:

Top Vatican officials - including the future Pope Benedict XVI - did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican's chief doctrinal enforcer.

[...]

The New York Times obtained the documents, which the church fought to keep secret, from Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, the lawyers for five men who have brought four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The documents include letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims' affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Father Murphy and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican.

Father Murphy not only was never tried or disciplined by the church's own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims. Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.

Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved by Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.

Such good Christians.

Dockside, I recognize that a trust prevents a company from dissappearing, but do you really believe the church is going anywhere (or JM or DC)? If the church is allowed to set aside a trust from which to compensate abuse victims, do you feel it will be an equitable settlement for the victims? I don't and feel there's a better way.

Think of the statement these trust type of arrangements are sending...yep mah, they are pathetic.

Preemptive... now that's the cake topper of all times, when it comes to religious notions... imho... does it get any more creepy than that...

How does one reply, here... no wonder I can't enter a church without such sadness and weeping that I have to leave... not that I've entered one in many, many years.

Two conclusions to draw here.

Organized religion is nothing but a business, and second, they still think they are above the law.

Those thousands of children are just collateral damage.

The Roman Catholic Church is a religion! The Administrative Incorporated Archdiocese of Milwaukee seeking civil remedy must behave as a civil entity. Te Vatican has used this strategy themselves in claiming The Vatican was not the employer of priests committing wrong doing.
This went as far as the supreme court who regarded it as an employment relation.
"The Holy See does not pay the salary of the priest, or benefits of the priest, or exercise day-to-day control over the priest, and ANY of the other factors indicating the presence of an (employment relationship). This is a priest of the Order Friar Servants of Mary. His very existence was unknown to the Holy See until after all the events in question."

The thrust of this is for all the jabbering about birth control & the Businesses of the RC Church opting out of business contracts that violate the religion that owns these businesses rules.

IN NY very popular Monsignor Charles Kavanagh had a Canon Trial which decided to defrock him.
He later sought a civil remedy against his accuser.

The Vatican moved the trial out of New York at the request of Cardinal Edward M. Egan of the New York Archdiocese in order to maintain privacy, said the cardinal’s spokesman, Joseph Zwilling.

“It’s not intended to be a media event,” Mr. Zwilling said. “It’s intended to be an opportunity for the church to review the facts and to reach a conclusion, and we did not believe that the possibility of having intensive media coverage would be conducive to that.”
In This Case the Vatican as ultimate arbiter of the Religion exercised its rights to move the rial out of NY to another administrative district. (Dioceses)
Kavanagh was defrocked has come back suing the accuser in a civil case siting all the bad press he received.

It's a nice little cats cradle & not the simple use of declaring bankruptcy to escape damages. Incorporated entities claim religious freedom whne it's a matter of BUSINESS & CIVIL LAW!

All out of financial convenience, it uses the civil business laws to bail out on dealing with the consequences of "it's crime".

When it comes to religious complaints, it's "here we go again", and they cry the constitution, infringing on the rights of those to practice their religion as they see fit, the tenets of their religion.

HMM. so business when it comes to settlements on the abuse of children and women by their Priests,

BUT

Religion when it comes to the rights and laws that the government says they must follow under the business that they run and then have the nerve to claim it is not a business but a religion.

Isn't enough, enough?

Either "put up or shut up", you are either a business or a religion, can't have it both ways.

Looks like, at least IMHO, it's time for the IRS to start some detailed investigations into all religious entities and see what is really being hidden from the laws.
No exceptions, no investigation of one religion over another. It's every single one of them, right down to the, so called cults, Scientology, Mormon, etc.
Investigate every one that claims to be a religion and gets that tax exempt status.

Enough of this foolishness and absurdity, do something about it.

From what I understand, and I could be wrong, anyone can "set up shop" and claim to be a religion by following the rules set by the IRS. Look at the Duggars, they pay no taxes, they are a religion, there home etc.

Maybe the time has come to end the religions exemptions. Maybe the time as come to show that what was once considered a fair and right thing to do, exempt religions from the tax base, has gotten way, way out of hand and what is being called "Religion" today is way to far removed from what the law intended.

Just my thoughts.