Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children.

State Senator Thomas K. Duane, who met on Wednesday with the New York Coalition to Protect Children, is the sponsor of a bill that would suspend the statute of limitations on abuse claims.

A perennial proposal that has been quashed in past years by Republicans who controlled the State Senate, the bill is now widely supported by the new Democratic majority in that chamber, and for the first time is given a good chance of passing.

If signed by Gov. David A. Paterson, a longtime supporter, the bill would at minimum revive hundreds of claims filed in recent years against Catholic priests and dioceses in New York, but dismissed because they were made after the current time limit, which is five years after the accuser turns 18. Similar legislation has passed in Delaware and in California, where a 2003 law led to claims that have cost the church an estimated $800 million to $1 billion in damages and settlements.

…

But while the Catholic Church is leading the opposition, in recent months a loose coalition of disparate groups has also joined the effort. They include leaders of the Hasidic and Sephardic Jewish institutions in Brooklyn, which could face equally costly abuse claims. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the criminal defense bar oppose lifting statutes of limitation as unfair to the accused, who must defend themselves against claims of transgressions decades old.

Source: NYTimes.com

Looks like the Roman Catholic Church is desperate for money again…  So now you can buy salvation again, isn’t that neat.

Via: International Herald Tribune

The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.”

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.

“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of New York, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”

Full Story

Analysis of the leak posted a few weeks ago, via Wikileaks

Texas Catholic hospitals and their parent health systems are engaging in intense conversations with their local bishops and scrambling to examine their records in light of a new whistleblower report alleging that thousands of sterilizations, and possibly some abortions, took place in 23 Texas Catholic hospitals between 2000 and 2003.These charges come at a critical time, when Catholic health care is battling pressures on many fronts to compromise Catholic ethical principles, and bishops have been working to strengthen their national code for Catholic health care, “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” (ERDs).

The report is based on detailed data available from the state of Texas, which requires hospitals to file information from inpatient records. The whistleblowers, who remain anonymous but were contacted through an intermediary by Our Sunday Visitor, compiled diagnostic and procedure codes to determine 9,684 instances of allegedly unequivocal “sterilization for contraceptive purposes.” Data indicating 39 abortions, however, was subject to interpretation and may involve morally acceptable procedures, like removal of a stillborn baby or emergency services for an abortion performed elsewhere.
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This comes as quite a surprise to me, because if the Catholics had at least one thing right I would have thought it was their position of the sanctity of life.

From our friends at Wikileaks

A new study of Texas’ Inpatient Hospital Discharge Public Use Data Files for 2000 through 2003 shows that the six US Catholic hospital systems operating in Texas reported providing contraceptive devices and medications as well as sterilizations of men and women in violation of human dignity and the Gospel (study may be downloaded from Catholic hospitals betray mission). Over 9,600 women were explicitly diagnosed for direct sterilization. 900 additional operations to interrupt fallopian tubes and 57 events related to legally induced abortion or “termination of pregnancy” were reported in circumstances that may also have violated Catholic hospital directives. The study does not include data on the hospitals’ provision of these procedures on an outpatient basis.