“It’s a hit piece in the service of another agenda”

Mark Shea, as usual, cuts right to the heart of the matter concerning this report about Cardinal Timothy Dolan in the New York Times:

There is much dudgeon the article. There is no dudgeon–none whatsoever–about the fact that exactly the same tactic is used to get rid of pervy public school teachers. This, and the lionization of the Right Sort of Roman makes me rather inclined to think this a specimen of the Times indulging in fake dudgeon because of Dolan’s leadership against the HHS mandate. In short, it’s a hit piece in the service of another agenda.

In the end, the story seems to be that Dolan tried to get rid of bad priests as fast as possible, which used to be a good thing according to the Times. Since the state did not see fit to get rid of them by putting them in jail and the canonical process might for all I know, have cost *more* than this route (has anybody done the calculations?) I don’t think it’s particularly a slam dunk that this was a bad way to go. In the end, the tradeoff is between asking, “Do you want a long expensive process in which the perv remains a priest on the payroll while he games the system endlessly or do you want a short process in which he gets some money and we are rid of him?” I, for one, am not ready to have hysterics about Plan B–at least till I know the cost of the full canonical rigamarole for laicizing a perv.

Read the rest.