At the time, then-Archbishop Dolan told a reporter that suggestions a “payoff ” had been made to a notorious pedophile priest to coax him to seek dismissal were “false, preposterous, and unjust.”

That claim contradicts court records from a bankruptcy hearing for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which show that the archdiocese made such payments to several accused pedophile clerics as a means of encouraging them leave the priesthood, a move that would enable the Church to take them off the books. The process, called “laicization,” is a formal procedure requiring Vatican approval.

The first Milwaukee archdiocese payment was made to Franklyn Becker, a former priest accused of abusing at least 10 minors, and who received a psychiatric diagnosis of pedophilia in 1983. The church paid more than $16 million to settle lawsuits involving Becker and another priest.

Dolan posed in his blog:

“Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ means.

But, please, not here!

Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.
Catholic Online praises Dolan for “pushing back The Darkness in New York.”