The Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, John J. Myers, is being criticized for mishandling a priest who “attended youth retreats and heard confessions of minors in defiance of a court-ordered lifetime ban on ministry to children.”
Parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Colts Neck, where the priest Michael Fugee, 52, who was convicted of child abuse in 2003, was involved with a youth group were angry because they said they were never told about Fugee’s background. Fugee is under Myer’s supervision and was on a retreat with youth without permission. An appellate judge later vacated the conviction over a technicality. The priest’s admission of guilt was not questioned, and the priest was allow to go to a rehab center for a while provided he signed an agreement not to work with minors for life.
“For the first time in his many years as an advocate for victims of clergy sex abuse, Mark Crawford, state director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called on the archbishop to resign, characterizing Fugee as the latest in a string of problem priests shielded by Myers.”
Yet, the priest has violated the agreement with impunity, though the church denies this. “Jim Goodness, a spokesman for Myers, denied Fugee had broken the agreement because he was under the supervision of other priests and St. Mary’s two youth ministers, who are longtime friends with the priest.”
“The Star-Ledger… said the archbishop “has shown a pattern of leniency toward pedophiles, indifference to potential victims, and a haughty disdain for those who dare to question his judgment.”
“Ignoring the agreement they made — ignoring common sense, ignoring prudence, ignoring the protection of children — is really beyond belief,” Carolann Aschoff, a family attorney in Roseland, NJ said. “They’re being reckless, and no one should be reckless with children.”
The lack of accountability in the Catholic Church continues to come to light as the citizens of the world is given the opportunity to make a decision on clear evidence whether or not to wonder after the beast, or live by God’s principles.
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead [was] a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. Revelation 17:4, 5
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