{"id":4493,"date":"2006-02-17T15:55:25","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T15:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/what-to-do-with-the-priests-in-chicago.html"},"modified":"2006-02-17T15:55:25","modified_gmt":"2006-02-17T15:55:25","slug":"what-to-do-with-the-priests-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/what-to-do-with-the-priests-in-chicago.html","title":{"rendered":"What to do with the priests in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Time magazine article:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

George\u2019s announcement came just days before a meeting in Austin, Texas of the National Review Board, a lay body set up to monitor the sex abuse scandals and craft policies for dealing with the problem. The Chicago policy shift is sure to dominate the agenda, especially since it could actually mark a break from canon law, which dictates that priests cannot be removed until they have legal representation and allegations have been substantiated. A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said: "Whatever the Cardinal decided to do, it will have to conform with canon law. But the Cardinal has said all along that he will find a way to do it, to remove priests immediately." <\/p>\n

Soon after the charges were filed against McCormack, there was no shortage of finger-pointing between the archdiocese and police and prosecutors over who it was that actually dropped the ball. The original allegations were first made to the police, which ended up choosing not to press charges at the time, according to the Archdiocese. And when the church did ultimately talk directly to the boy’s lawyer, they couldn’t independently confirm the accusations against McCormack, who was allowed to stay on as pastor at the church and basketball coach in the parish school. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure some of our experts will come up with this immediately, but the point about this that puzzles me is the Canon Law caveat.  Is it really true that a priest cannot be "removed" from a particular position<\/em> until they have legal representation, etc. It seems that such would apply to removing a priest from active ministry, period  or suspending his faculties (perhaps), but it strikes me that a bishop could move Fr. X from pastor of St. Abigail’s to being the custodian\/confessor on the 4th floor of the Chancery if he deemed it necessary at any time for any reason..or no reason. That’s just the way the system works when there aren’t accusations involved. Is it different if there are accusations? <\/p>\n

Correct me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Time magazine article: George\u2019s announcement came just days before a meeting in Austin, Texas of the National Review Board, a lay body set up to monitor the sex abuse scandals and craft policies for dealing with the problem. The Chicago policy shift is sure to dominate the agenda, especially since it could actually mark…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat to do with the priests in Chicago - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/what-to-do-with-the-priests-in-chicago.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What to do with the priests in Chicago - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Time magazine article: George\u2019s announcement came just days before a meeting in Austin, Texas of the National Review Board, a lay body set up to monitor the sex abuse scandals and craft policies for dealing with the problem. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}