Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 29, 2020 / 01:32 pm (CNA).- During its bankruptcy process, the Diocese of Buffalo has announced it will end financial support and health benefits for priests facing substantiated allegations of sexual abuse.
“Following discussions and subsequent agreement with the Creditors Committee, which has been appointed as part of the Diocese of Buffalo’s Chapter 11 process, the Diocese will cease all financial support and health benefits for priests with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse,” the Diocese of Buffalo told CNA April 29.
The decision is scheduled to take effect May 1. It is expected to impact 23 priests who have been receiving “sustenance payments” totalling $600,000 annually, according to Buffalo News.
Eligible priests will continue receiving pension payments from a priest pension program, which, according to a 2017 statement from the diocese, is managed by a board of trustees and not directly overseen by the diocese.
“None of the 23 individuals affected currently has faculties to function as a priest within the Diocese. The nature and details of the allegations that resulted in their faculties being suspended relate, in most cases, to allegations raised many years ago,” Greg Tucker, a diocesan spokesman, told CNA.
“The Diocese is directing these individuals to information and available resources elsewhere for their health insurance and other sustenance needs going forward,” Tucker added.
Canon law requires that dioceses provide for the “decent support” of all incardinated clerics, with bishops required to offer at least the provision for basic sustenance, even to clerics not in ministry.
In the wake of the sexual abuse scandals in the United States, several priests either accused or found to have committed sexual abuse of minors have appealed to the Vatican regarding their right to basic sustenance, including access to health care, and that right has been upheld by Vatican officials.
The priests who will lose support from the diocese remain clerics, incardinated in the Buffalo diocese.
“None have been laicized,” Tucker told CNA. “These are priests whose faculties have been suspended based on substantiated claims of abuse.”
While the priests in question have been accused of sexual misconduct, the diocese did not specify how many have been found guilty, or even how many have been given the benefit of due process or formal trials in either canon or civil law.
“The allegations pertain to many years ago – decades in fact, and precede the formation of the Independent Review Board. That said, whatever investigative process in place at the time determined that the allegations were ‘substantiated’ either because they admitted the offense or there was a criminal investigation, or allegations were corroborated based on multiple allegations – and those priests were then relieved of their priestly faculties,” Tucker said.
“In later cases (2002 and after), there was an independent investigation and an Independent Review Board recommendation. In some cases, the diocese initiated a canonical process and in other cases it did not,” Tucker added.
The decision was communicated in an April 23 letter to the 23 priests from Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, temporary administrator of the diocese, and in a conference call.
Scharfenberger told the priests that while sustenance payments and health care coverage will cease, the changes will not affect existing pension payments.
Some priests, however, are concerned those payments will not be enough, and it is not clear whether all those affected by the change qualify for a pension.
Michael Taheri, a lawyer for one affected priest, told Buffalo News that the diocese’s behavior is “unconscionable.”
“As a Catholic, I’m ashamed,” Taheri said.
His client, Fr. Samuel Venne, was removed from ministry in 2018 after an allegation of sexual abuse dating back decades. Venne told Buffalo News he was a cancer survivor with no other income beyond $500 per month from social security.
“How am I going to pay for my medicines? Where am I going to live?” Venne asked Scharfenberger.
The priest also said that he has consistently maintained his innocence, and passed a polygraph test as part of the diocese’s investigation into the allegation against him.
The announcement by Buffalo comes as the diocese has had to make staffing cuts and filed for bankruptcy in recent months.
In February, the diocese filed for Chapter 11 reorganization after being named in hundreds of new sexual abuse lawsuits filed in New York state courts. Another RICO lawsuit was filed in August alleging a “pattern of racketeering activity” by the diocese.
The state’s Child Victims Act had set up a one-year lookback window for such lawsuits, as many cases of child sex abuse have long-expired statutes of limitations.
Earlier in the month, the diocese closed its Christ the King seminary which had been running a $500,000 average annual deficit for a decade.
On March 19, the diocese said it would be accelerating cuts to staffing for its Catholic Center, eliminating 21 positions and moving three more from full-time to part-time.
As other Catholic dioceses and parishes applied for, and received, emergency loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, the dioceses of Buffalo and Rochester filed a lawsuit against the Small Business Administration saying they were wrongfully excluded from the program because of their bankruptcy debtor status.
Scharfenberger, who is Bishop of Albany, was appointed temporary apostolic administrator of the diocese in December. The last bishop of the diocese, Bishop Richard Malone, resigned after a Vatican-ordered apostolic visitation, or investigation, of the diocese under his leadership.
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Though Islam refers to itself as “The Religion of Peace”. serenity and tranquility seem to allude it too often. The news of the day gives a different impression as to the claims!
Muslims that have converted to Christianity are outstanding representatives of the Christian faith. Praise God for their testimony.
Psalm 119:165 Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.
Psalm 34:14 Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
Psalm 29:11 May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!
Psalm 4:8 In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
James 3:18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Blessings for Rushdie and for all Muslims that they too come to the un-surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.
About the novel, “Satanic Verses,” this further explanation of its origin: “The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses that refer to three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the ‘satanic verses’ was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari” (Wikipedia).
Even the very first biographers wrote long after Muhammad, the first about one hundred twenty years after his death: Ibn Ishaq (704-773 A.D.). The only version of this lost work was edited by Ibn Hisham (d. 835 or 840), a full two centuries after Muhammad, and translated into English by A. Guillaume only in 1955 (“The Life of Muhammad”. Oxford University Press, 800 pages of small print).
The “satanic verses” in the Qur’an refer to a visit Muhammad (as the revolutionary monotheist) is said still to have made one night to a pagan temple. The triad goddesses are the offspring of Allah and his wife. Charged with hypocrisy, Muhammad immediately regretted the one-night relapse and unambiguously clarified the distance between Allah alone and the paganism of Mecca.
Related to which, Muhammad’s understanding of the Triune Oneness is distorted by the cultural imprint that the Christian Faith is only a (pagan-like) triad. And, further, the error identifies the triad as God, Jesus (under Islam, a prophet rather than “the word made flesh”), and Mary (there is no Holy Spirit).
Muslims do not read the Bible, because they know (!) that under the Qur’an, as the final revelation (“the word made book”), all chronologically earlier scriptures—both Jewish and Christian—are corruptions of Islam as the definitively-restored natural religion.
I’m starting to think of Francis not as a new Luther but as a new Mohammed, seeking, in due course to erase all that preceded him. Of course he needs references to Christ from time to time, but essentially as a prop to confer an imaginary semblance of legitimacy for his agenda.
God bless you dear physicist and seeker of God’s truth.
Or, maybe not a new Muhammad, but a sprout from the same trunk of natural religion?
In olden times the Syrian scribes—forced converts to Islam—are thought to have inserted Christian references into the Qur’an, in order to make scavenger-hunt Islam more palatable. (Hold that thought…).
The Qur’an borrow from the Pentateuch, in part to endorse the “law of Moses,” but so far as I can find, explicit reference is made only to the first four (affirmative) commandments, and not to the (prohibitive) final six (thou shalt not…). The parallel, some would say, is with current distortions of moral theology, which celebrate works of charity and mercy while discounting the absolute moral prohibitions as steadfastly affirmed (rigid?) in the Catechism and Veritatis Splendor.
So, will the new super-dicastery of Evangelization peddle a generic Christianity unaccountable to the demoted “dicastery” for Doctrine of the Faith, or not?
And, does “fraternity”—-with all of its favorable meanings–also represent an accommodation like that of the Syrian scribes of the 7th and 6th centuries? But, instead of making Islam more palatable to past-Christians (as in the past), does the current trajectory render a diluted Christianity more palatable to a resurgent Islam? Is Hollerich’s synodal “scientific foundation” (for jettisoning sexual morality) simply a natural religion (tending toward a folk religion) like Islam but cross-dressed in modern clothes? Bishop Batzing in an open collar rather than a turban?
Osmosis works in both directions! Syrian-Islam and post-Christian Catholicism, both, as natural religions? No longer convinced, or forthright, or proclaiming (different from proselytizing), or even articulate about the divinely-revealed and gifted life of supernatural grace?
7th and 8th centuries.
Seriously Edward J Baker? How do you extrapolate a judgement of Pope Francis from this article or is it that you have to negate our Pope as some badge of belonging to right thinking?…..
“Of course he needs references to Christ from time to time, but essentially as a prop to confer an imaginary semblance of legitimacy for his agenda.”
……if you alone say so!
In 1989, I, being a callow college student, was predicing that shocking and barbaric crimes like this one would surely knock some sense into the thick-skulled liberals who congregate at such places as Chautauqua. They would surely demand immigration policies to keep such people as this fanatic out of the country. Alas, since that time, there have been many such incidents, some far worse than this one, and the open-borders lunacy on the Left has only become more extreme. As the title of James Burnham’s classic put it, liberalism is the suicide of the West.
And from Tony W, it’s the thick skulled liberals who cop some flack. Indeed they need some sense knocked into them! Observations and insights inspired by what? Chautauqua is not your style? Not mine either but I hardly see it as a contributor to the social/spiritual malaise you are attributing. It’s a big world after all. Somehow for many in the USA it’s getting terribly small?
Ok so lets think for a moment that you can have it your way. All the likes of Chautauqua are done away with. The Immigration policy now prevents all crazies
( Muslims, Aliens and others who encroach upon your national boarder i suppose ) are no longer a problem…. they are gone or only the nice ones remain. Your ‘Christian Nation’ has uniformity of doctrine from east to west, north to south. All people conform to ( your ) world view by some form of decree I suppose. The Christian world view according to the likes of you, because that is what it would be. Do you really think that would address ‘the human condition’ Jesus so clearly enunciated in his teachings as contained in the Gospels? Let your imagination run wild!
Salman has lived under terrible pressure for so many years. I Pray he recovers.