In a letter sent on September 30 to members of the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan writes an explanation about the delay in paying victims of the Catholic Church’s multi-decade sexual abuse scandal, saying that its insurer, Chubb, is “legally responsible for paying but has refused to pay.”
Dolan calls the situation “a sad story!” — using his second exclamation point of the missive. (Dolan’s exclamations and use of “sad” echo the rhetorical style of his friend, former President Donald Trump.)
The first exclamation point emphasized Dolan’s take on Chubb’s position and what that position implies about the Church’s intentions. Chubb “scurrilously claims that they are not obligated to settle claims because the abuse of victims was ‘expected or intended’ by the Church,” as Dolan reports, a claim that presumes the leaders of the Church permitted the abuse knowingly.
Or as Cardinal Dolan puts it: “They make the false argument that people like my beloved predecessors Cardinal Terence Cooke or Cardinal John O’Connor took actions with the intent of harming children, or at least expecting that would be the case. Outrageous!”
Describing Chubb’s assertion that the Church was complicit in the abuse to a level where it invalidated the conditions of the insurance policy, Dolan expresses incredulity.
“You read that right,” Dolan writes about Chubb’s insinuations regarding Dolan’s predecessors, as though to a reader Chubb’s notion that Diocesan leadership was complicit in the Church’s acknowledged abuse of children for half a century would sound impossible. (The Archdiocese won an early decision in this case, which was reversed last spring on appeal.)
Dolan submits that the Archdiocese has paid Chubb more than $2 billion (“by today’s standards”) to protect itself and “those people such policies were purchased to protect, the survivors of child sexual abuse.” The Cardinal asserts that Chubb has “abandoned” those survivors.
Dolan reveals, again reaching for the exclamation point, that “there remains about 1400 cases of alleged abuse, some dating back to World War II!” — which he expects insurance to cover.
Addressing its lawsuit against the insurer to compel victim compensation on the Church’s behalf, and the attendant “legal and moral obligations,” Dolan asserts that Chubb, and not the Church, is now “attempting to evade their legal and moral contractual obligation to settle covered claims which would bring peace and healing to victim-survivors.”
In one of four exclamation points Dolan employs in his last large paragraph alone, the Cardinal writes: “Cower and hide we will not!”