Vatican's US attorney responds to Supreme Court action

Great! Now the US State Department needs to intervene and demand the Vatican cooperate with the many subpoenas for information. Discussion of breaking diplomatic relations so the Nuncio cannot hid information. If the Nuncio was not a diplomat, the police could and should raid his offices and home.

If the Vatican was involved in drugs, our military would have occupied the Vatican. With the documents collected from the occupation, many of the curia would be in prison, maybe even the Pope.

Remember St. Peter did not claim the right to replace Judas. The Church will survive but will do much better without these scoundrels.

If the priests aren't employees of the Vatican and the bishops aren't either, what's stopping the Catholic Church from forming an independent, self-governing (autocephalous) Church? Your local bishop is free to take his spiritual direction from Patriarch Bartholomew, or maybe Pope Shenouda III in Cairo.

If our chief shepherd in Rome doesn't want us, perhaps national conferences of bishops should be putting on their bathing trunks and getting ready to swim the Tiber to Constantinople, Moscow, Cairo anyone?

Durwood: I believe you are confusing two levels of obligation. In US civil law, each diocese is an independent entity and can act accordingly. But civil law does not negate the moral obligation of religious obedience to one's religious leaders.

All of the documents needed are to be found at the local diocese. All of the witnesses are at the local diocese. All of the people who moved these priests around are at the local diocese.

The fantasy that the local dioceses were blameless while it was all magically coordinated in Rome is ridiculous on its face.

All of the men who covered things up are in the local dioceses.

You would like to be able to blame this conservative Pope for the sins of his liberal brethren, but trust me, you don't want to go there. Once the court cases start, discovery is a two way process and you may find out more about the activities of your local liberal bishops than you want to know.

And one other thing. If the court holds that the Vatican is to be considered the "employer" of the wayward priests and bishops, then the next step will be that the Vatican, to protect itself in the future, will be forced to take a great deal of control over every single priest and bishop, in every diocese. So much for the progressive dioceses. They will simply cease to exist. The Vatican will be selecting priests for each diocese, they will get greater control over the seminaries to insure that only the correct (i.e. conservative) correct type of men are ordained, etc.

@ Anonymous:

too bad the US is behind much of the immorality in the world. Actions of the US military and secret service have caused havoc and suffering upon many countries (Vietnam, many central American states, etc…)

Also the US backs many of the vices in this world, such as pornography and abortion.

They are not the paladins of justice you believe them to be.

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It is correct to bring bad priests to justice, no doubt in that, but it should not turn into a persecution.

If the Vatican is not the employer than why is it the Vatican is the only "employer" able to defrock a priest?

Why can't organizations do the right thing? It's not just the Catholic Church who fails to act properly when caught in a scandal, but the Catholic Church makes a claim that no other corporation makes, namely that it is the conduit for the presence of God in the world. Although the Orthodox churches have their problems, they never organized themselves into a rigid structure, perhaps because the pagan Roman culture that defined western Europe did not exist in the same way in Byzantium. Although Rome has always claimed superiority over the loose structure of the Eastern Church, this crisis shows that the Byzantine mode of organization is the truer structure and that it has maintained Christian truth more completely than Rome. The behavior of the Pope in this crisis has disgusted me and has allowed me to see the Roman church for what it really is: a legal corporation. It abandoned Christianity a long time ago.

The factual issue in this case is that the priest in question was transferred from Ireland to the United States. When a multinational corporation does something like that, they're usually considered to be exercising the "direction and control" which makes them the employer. See
"International Religious Organizations - an L1 Option?" The Catholic Church has been held to be enough in control of its various units to allow L-1 (multinational employer, international transfer) visas for entry to the US.