More Catholic problems

Serbe Kovaleski has an article in The New York Times about yet another problematic archbishop:

In 2002, at the height of the sexual abuse crisis confronting the Roman Catholic Church in America, Timothy M. Dolan arrived in Milwaukee as the new archbishop, succeeding a prelate who had been caught up in scandal. To abuse victims who had felt rebuffed by the church, Archbishop Dolan— warm, down to earth— seemed a bright beam of hope.
He listened to them, wept with them, and vowed to change the way the Archdiocese dealt with the molestation of children by priests. But, just months later, he handwrote a letter to Peter Isely, a victim and an advocate whose wife worried that the new archbishop would let him down.
“Listen to her,” Archbishop Dolan wrote. “Do not put your trust in me. You often speak eloquently about your own imperfection and sin. I’m in the same boat. I am imperfect, sinful, struggling, clumsy.” His message was to trust only in God. And his warning proved accurate: he would disappoint many victims.
Days before the letter, they learned that Archbishop Dolan had instructed lawyers to seek the dismissal of five lawsuits against the church. Over the next six years, advocates would lament that he resisted many of their appeals for change, from opening church records on predatory priests to offering victims more comprehensive help.
Archbishop Dolan of Milwaukee is now Archbishop Dolan of New York, one of the church’s most visible leaders. As the scandal has reignited in recent months, focusing scrutiny on bishops from Ireland to India, he has used his influential post to defend Pope Benedict XVI from criticism that he was slow to move against priests. The archbishop himself has struggled with the crisis during the decade since it struck the church in America with startling force. While sexual abuse has not confronted him as a major issue in New York, it loomed large in Milwaukee and in his previous assignment as a bishop in St. Louis. And a close look at his record there, largely unexamined since his arrival in New York about a year ago, shows how he tried— not always successfully— to accommodate competing demands.
One of a generation of bishops who came to the job after many of their predecessors were discredited, Archbishop Dolan faced not only abuse victims but also a church hierarchy worried about ruinous damages awards, parishioners angry over payments to victims, and his own priests, some perhaps falsely accused. It was a diplomatic gantlet many recent bishops have had to walk, and Archbishop Dolan trod it with particular care.
A genial conciliator, he consoled victims and created a fund to pay for compensation and counseling. He helped remove a dozen priests from ministry and disclosed the names of dozens more. “He changed our experience in Milwaukee,” said Ralph Leese, 58, who received a financial settlement for his repeated abuse by a priest. “He made you feel like he knew where you were coming from, almost like the abuse had happened to him.”
But like bishops before him, the archbishop was also a tough defender of the church’s interests, clergy, and bank balances. In Milwaukee, he worked in an unusually public and personal way to limit lawsuits and settlements. He declined to post the names of abusive priests who belonged to religious orders, though some other bishops have done so. And in one St. Louis case, records show, he swiftly took the side of a priest who then sued his accuser with the archdiocese’s help, though church officials had not made a detailed investigation of the complaint.
In interviews and written responses for this article, Archbishop Dolan, 60, has discussed his handling of the abuse crisis at length. He expressed impatience with Mr. Isely’s group (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP) which, he said, could be impossible to please. The group, he said, was one of many forces pressing him, including Catholics who wanted no acknowledgment of the sex abuse problem. “I kept saying, ‘We need to talk about this. We need to wrestle with this,’” he said. “They kept saying, ‘Would you quit talking about it?’” The archbishop said the Church had done more than any other organization to prevent future molestation. But he also acknowledged missteps as he and other church leaders struggled to address a growing scandal.

Rico says there's a ton more here, if you care...