i hope India Catholics eill ponder the silent of Cardinsl Timothy Dolan in view of the Pontiff's teaching to treat theOrthodox Church with respect
The church of nassau OTB must be open for the faithful on Sunday April 21, 2019. To each his own NY Const Art 1 Sec 3. Hell no Cuomo!
Nun’s Rape Case Against Bishop Shakes a Catholic Bastion in India
Sunday, April 21, 2019
| Track Code | Track Name | Entry | Scratch | 1st Post ET | 1st Post Local | Time Zone | Stakes Race(s) | Stakes Grade | T.V. Indicator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GG | GOLDEN GATE FIELDS | 48 | 24 | 3:45 PM | 12:45 PM | PDT | |||
| LS | LONE STAR PARK | 72 | 0 | 3:35 PM | 2:35 PM | CDT | |||
| SA | SANTA ANITA PARK | 72 | 24 | 3:30 PM | 12:30 PM | PDT | |||
| SUN | SUNLAND PARK | 168 | 0 | 2:30 PM | 12:30 PM | MDT | |||
| WO | WOODBINE | 72 | 48 |
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Published: June 1, 2012
By Maria Abi-Habib and Suhasini Raj
KOCHI, India — When Bishop Franco Mulakkal agreed to personally celebrate the First Communion for Darly’s son, a rare honor in their Catholic Church in India, the family was overcome with pride.
Cuomo calls out church for opposing Child Victims Act in feud with Dolan while telling the Orthodox Church he decides when Easter sunday occurs
Gov. Andrew Cuomo escalated his feud with Cardinal Timothy Dolan on Tuesday — singling out the Catholic Church’s leadership as the powerful force that for years blocked passage of the Child Victims Act.
The bill, which passed both houses of the Legislature on Monday, extends the statute of limitations for reporting sex abuse and for filing lawsuits.
Cuomo said it’s ”been documented that the leadership of the church in this state has opposed the Child Victims Act. They’ve been against the Child Victims Act up until this year.”
In an extraordinary move at an Albany press conference on gun safety measures, the governor then pulled out press accounts last year of the cardinal opposing the measure.
Cuomo said the church objected to a provision in the legislation that would permit an “unlimited retroactive window” allowing sex abuse victims to file civil lawsuits over alleged crimes that occurred decades ago.
“We have Eminence Dolan saying that the look back … would be very strangling” to the church, Cuomo said. “He said it targeted the Catholic Church. I didn’t say that. His Eminence said that. The Catholic Church was very up-front on their opposition to this issue. They have shifted their position — and that’s fine.”
The New York State Catholic Conference said it withdrew its opposition this year after it became clear that the legislation also covered public institutions.
But even here, Cuomo’s office disputed the church. The governor’s chief adviser, Melissa DeRosa, said the Catholic Conference opposed an amended version of the bill last year that treated public and private institutions equally.
Cuomo’s broadside came after Dolan wrote a column in Tuesday’s Post that criticized the governor for approving and celebrating an expansion of New York’s abortion law and unfairly blaming the church for blocking the Child Victims Act.
Cuomo agreed with Dolan that heinous child abuse is a societal problem that touches all institutions — not just the church.
But the governor slammed the church for leading the charge to block efforts to make it easier for child abuse victims to seek redress as adults.
“They have done the movies, `Spotlight.’ We have incidents in Buffalo, in Rochester, in Syracuse, where it has been documented that priests have been involved in child abuse,” Cuomo said.
“The Catholic Church was not aggressive in stopping it when they knew about it.”
Later Tuesday on WNYC radio, Cuomo took issue with Dolan’s criticism of Albany’s action last week to strengthen New York’s abortion law.
He said Dolan wants to repeal the entire abortion law.
“We don’t want to go backwards,” Cuomo said.
“Cardinal Dolan agrees with President Trump to roll back Roe vs. Wade. His problem isn’t the New York law. He really has a problem with the federal law. I understand the Catholic Church’s position. My father understood the Catholic Church’s position,” he said, referring to the late Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a Catholic who also tangled with the church over abortion rights.
The Cardinal told the Sirius XM Catholic channel he hoped his feud with Cuomo would end.
“It’s gotten a lot of publicity, the misunder- maybe not misunderstanding, the battle that Governor Cuomo and I are having… It’s a battle that I didn’t start, that I do not enjoy. And I hope doesn’t continue,” he said.
Cardinal Dolan Fires Back at NY Gov. Cuomo After He Criticizes the Church on Abortion
Source: AP Photo/Richard Drew
Cardinal Timothy Dolan is fighting back after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo accused him in the New York Times of being aligned with the “religious right” when it comes to abortion.
Governor Cuomo has been roundly criticized by Republicans since his signing of a late-term abortion bill into law on January 17, and ordering that the World Trade Center be lit pink in celebration. Many Catholics have also called for his excommunication, as Cuomo identifies as Catholic.
On Wednesday, Governor Cuomo published an op-ed decrying President Trump’s position on abortion. The piece also targeted Dolan, a Catholic cardinal in New York.
“Mr. Trump and the religious right are spreading falsehoods about New York’s law to inflame their base,” wrote Cuomo. “Activists on the far right continue to mislead with the ridiculous claim that the act will allow abortions up to a minute before birth. While Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, and the Catholic Church are anti-choice, most Americans, including most Catholics, are pro-choice. The 73 percent of New Yorkers who support Roe includes 59 percent of Catholics. While governments may very well enact laws that areconsistent with religious teaching, governments do not pass laws to beconsistent with what any particular religion dictates.”
“I was educated in religious schools,” the governor added, “and I am a former altar boy. My Roman Catholic values are my personal values. The decisions I choose to make in my life, or in counseling my daughters, are based on my personal moral and religious beliefs.”
On Thursday, Dolan issued a statement in response to the governor.
“Debate abortion on what it is,” wrote the cardinal. “Don’t hide behind labels like ‘right wing’ and ‘Catholic.”
Dolan also defended himself and his track record on working with Governor Cuomo.
“This is something new from the governor,” Dolan wrote. “He did not consider me part of the “religious right” when seeking my help with the minimum wage increase, prison reform, protection of migrant workers, a welcome of immigrants and refugees, and advocacy for college programs for the state’s inmate population, which we were happy to partner with him on, because they were our causes too. I guess I was part of the “religious left” in those cases.”
When it came to the issue of abortion itself, Dolan clarified that it is not a right versus left or Catholic issue, but a humanitarian one.
“The civil rights of the helpless, innocent, baby in the womb, as liberal Democrat Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey once remarked is not about ‘right versus left’, but right versus wrong,” the cardinal wrote.
“The governor also continues his attempt to reduce the advocacy for the human rights of the pre-born infant to a “Catholic issue,” an insult to our allies of so many religions, or none at all. Governor Casey again: ‘I didn’t get my pro-life belief from my religion class in a Catholic school, but from my biology and U.S. Constitution classes.’”
In Dolan’s view, one’s religious beliefs ought to shape and inform public policy decisions.
“Yes, religion is personal; it’s hardly private, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and struggle for civil rights so eloquently showed,” Dolan wrote. “Governor Cuomo’s professed faith teaches discrimination against immigrants is immoral, too. Does that mean he cannot let that moral principle guide his public policy? Clearly not.”
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During the ceremony, Darly looked over at her sister, a nun who worked with the bishop, to see her eyes spilling over with tears — tears of joy, she figured. But only later would she learn of her sister’s allegation that the night before, the bishop had summoned the nun to his quarters and raped her. The family says that was the first assault in a two-year ordeal in which the prelate raped her 13 times.
The bishop, who has maintained his innocence, will be charged and face trial by a special prosecutor on accusations of rape and intimidation, the police investigating the case said. But the church acknowledged the nun’s accusations only after five of her fellow nuns mutinied and publicly rallied to her side to draw attention to her yearlong quest for justice, despite what they described as heavy pressure to remain silent.
“We used to see the fathers of the church as equivalent to God, but not anymore,” said Darly, her voice shaking with emotion. “How can I tell my son about this, that the person teaching us the difference between right and wrong gave him his First Communion after committing such a terrible sin?”
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The case in India, in the southern state of Kerala, is part of a larger problem in the church that Pope Francis addressed on Tuesday for the first time after decades of silence from the Vatican. He acknowledged that sexual abuse of nuns by clerics is a continuing problem in the church.
At a time when church attendance is low in the West, and empty parishes and monasteries are being shuttered across Europe and America, the Vatican increasingly relies on places like India to keep the faith growing.
“India’s clergy and nuns are hugely important to the Catholic Church in the West. The enthusiasm of Christians in Asia stands in stark contrast to the lower-temperature religion in the West,” said Diarmaid MacCulloch, a professor of church history at the University of Oxford.
But the scandal in Kerala is dividing India’s Catholics, who number about 20 million despite being a relatively small minority of a vast population.
And there may be more to come: More nuns have stepped forward to report sexual abuse at the hands of priests, the police in Kerala State say. And in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district, four priests have been accused of blackmailing women during confession, using the information to coerce them into sex, according to Sudhakaran Pillai, the head of the local crime branch.
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“If this case goes ahead, it will be a new beginning and priests and bishops will be forced to be held accountable,” said the Rev. Augustine Vattoly, a priest in Kerala who was an early supporter of the nun’s accusations and said he was ordered by his superiors to back away or face repercussions.
“The church is losing its moral authority,” Father Vattoly said. “We are losing the faith of the people. The church will become a place without people if this continues. Just like in Europe, the young will no longer come here.”
Details of the nun’s accusations came from interviews with law enforcement officials and from her family and the five other nuns who saw the saga unfold inside the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, which is based in India but answers to the Vatican.
Copies of the official complaints the nun addressed to church authorities by email and post were also provided to The New York Times. (The nun is not being named and her sister is being identified only by her first name because under Indian law, the media, including international news organizations, cannot identify rape victims.)
The nun’s family accuses Bishop Mulakkal, 54, of raping her repeatedly over a two-year period, dating from May 5, 2014.
The bishop could not be reached for comment, but church officials and the Kerala police say that he maintains he is innocent.
The nun, who belongs to the Missionaries of Jesus religious order, first informed church authorities of the assaults in January 2017, approaching nearly a dozen church officials, including bishops, a cardinal and representatives of the Vatican. Some cautioned her to wait, assuring her that the church would take action. Other officials forbade her to go to the police, her family said.
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