Weakland Teamed With Sklba in Coverups, Passes the Buck

Doh.

The ex-Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland OSB, tells the camera that yes, indeed, the current auxiliary Bishop of Milwaukee, Richard Sklba, was a 'close adviser' and was 'in the know' about the game of hop/skip/jump-transferring ephebophile priests.

No kidding. And water runs downhill.

More interesting is his attempt to deflect some blame to the Vatican.

Weakland testified that he held a local church trial - a formal internal proceeding that he said had not been done elsewhere - to get rid of two abusive priests in the 1990s. The priests appealed to the Vatican their removal from the ministry.

In 1998, Weakland testified, he went to the Vatican and met with officials in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, a top church office then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI.

"I pleaded that even though (one abusive priest) was retired and in ill health, that he be reduced to the lay state to bring some kind of closure . . . ," Weakland testified. "And instead it dragged on and he died about six months later."

Laicizing a priest is a highly technical matter, and pursuing laicization as a remedy to criminal misbehavior is the approximate equivalent of the Al Capone pirouette: using the tax code because direct criminal prosecution was not available to the Feds.

But, of course, criminal prosecution WAS available; Weakland and Sklba chose not to go that route. Rita MacDonald is dead-on:

Rita McDonald, a Marquette University emeritus professor of psychology who was long involved in archdiocesan affairs, was critical of Weakland for spreading the blame to others.

"He accepted some responsibility for what happened, but he never called the police," McDonald said. "There was always that caveat: 'You have to understand how things were back then.'

That's not a caveat, Ms. MacDonald. That's a whine.

Weakland even has the temerity to blame Mike McCann:

Weakland also blamed the criminal justice system for abusive priests, decrying a probation sentence ordered by one judge and the decision by a district attorney not to prosecute a case if an abuser was removed from his county.

"It was the priest's individual lawyer who was working with the D.A., and it was that lawyer who then reported to me what that conversation was all about and what was expected of me," Weakland testified

I'll agree that McCann was approximately useless. That's something that McCann has to answer for--but he won't.

Weakland also seems to have forgotten his bullying and threatening (and wholesale firings) of people who stood up to his and Sklba's protection-racket. I wonder why...

You can view the video here. Have a puke-bucket nearby.