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Posted on 01/07/2006 4:36:52 PM PST by NYer
NEW YORK After nearly four years of fighting sex abuse charges, Monsignor Charles Kavanagh will have his day in a Church court. It's what the Vatican ordered. It's what Kavanagh wants.
"This is what I prayed for," Kavanagh said. "I understand the need in this climate for significant review. All I want is a full and fair hearing and I'll be fine."
In 2002 a former student accused Kavanagh of abusing him more than 20 years ago, when Kavanagh was head of Cathedral Prep Seminary in Manhattan.
The claims were made beyond the statute of limitations.
The Archdiocese of New York suspended Kavanagh, then pastor at St. Raymond Church in the Bronx, and pressed on with an internal investigation. They sent their findings to the judicial arm of the Vatican, which found the evidence merited a full trial by a Church Tribunal.
"It's good for the people of faith of the Archdiocese of New York," said Joseph Zwilling of the Archdiocese of New York. " They know I hope now that the Church takes those allegations very seriously."
While not overconfident, Kavanagh says the facts should exonerate him.
"I feel that if I do this honorably my name will be cleared," he said.
Let me guess - they'll move him somewhere else?
20 years out, they are unlikely to come up with probative evidence one way or the other. If they guy has gone 20 years with no other allegations, he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Unfortunately, the valid claims against some priests have brought out the nuts and the opportunists trying to get some easy money. You see the same thing sometimes when there's a bus accident - - the bus company gets more claimants than there were seats on the bus.
I like that!
I'd like it better if he said "think" instead of "feel."
"Johnny, solve this equation."
"Well, teacher, I feel that the answer should be..."
This confusion of the words "think" and "feel" is leading many to conflate thinking your way to an answer with feeling your way to an answer, which hardly ever works.
The word "feel" in a context like this is usually a big red flag.
I agree. This one doesn't quite pass the smell test. In almost every case, there were either multiple victims or a long period of abuse and neither seems to be the case.
"In almost every case, there were either multiple victims or a long period of abuse and neither seems to be the case."
Those are significant indicators, true.
Of course if someone makes a charge against a priest, he's automatically guilty. We should all forget the fact that a pedophile is not unlike a serial killer - they do not stop with just one.
Since he's a Catholic priest and other members of the clergy have committed sexual abuse and coverups of those crimes, this priest is guilty by association.
Hope you are not called for jury duty.
Yeah, your right - SO MANY of them actually get punished, disbarred, and kicked out. They NEVER just move any of the faggot ones away where no one knows about them.
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