BY ELAINE MAGLIARO
Back in February, I wrote a post about Newark Archbishop John J. Myers’s plan to spend more than $500,000 to build a new 3,000 square foot, three-level addition to his retirement home. I should note that the 4,500 square foot house already boasts “five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a three-car garage and an outdoor swimming pool.”
Tom Kludt of Talking Points Memo reported in February that “renovations to the home, which Myers currently uses as a weekend residence, have come under a bit of scrutiny. The 3,000-square-foot expansion will include an indoor exercise pool, three fireplaces and an elevator to be enjoyed by Myers in his future retirement.”
According to Kludt, there is a Christian organization called Faithful America that has “drawn the support of thousands in its protest of a New Jersey bishop’s plush retirement home.” Faithful America has plans to deliver a petition this coming Sunday to Archbishop Myers, “calling on him to nix his plans” to move into that plush retirement home.
The petition, which has been signed by nearly 20,000 people nationwide, reads: “Archbishop Myers, you don’t need a 7,500-square-foot house for your retirement. Please start heeding Pope Francis’s admonitions, and put being a good pastor for New Jersey Catholics ahead of building an opulent lifestyle for yourself.”
Michael Sherrard, the executive director of Faithful America, told TPM in an email that the home where Archbishop Myers “plans to reside when he retires in two years, contradicts the message being pushed by Pope Francis.” He added, “Pope Francis has inspired Catholics all over the world with his challenge to [to] become a ‘poor church for the poor,’ but Archbishop Myers seems to have missed the memo. When the pope said bishops should be ‘close to the people … animated by inner poverty,’ I don’t think living in a mansion with five bedrooms and two pools is what he meant.”
SOURCES
The Fourth Post in the “Oh My Achin’ Head” Series: Addition to Newark Archbishop’s Future Retirement Home to Cost Archdiocese $500,000 (Flowers for Socrates)
Thousands Want To Drive Jersey’s ‘Bishop Of Bling’ From His Plush Retirement Home (Talking Points Memo)
Big Spending NJ Archdiocese Doesn’t Want To Talk About Pope’s Call For Modesty (Talking Points Memo)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
When I see stuff like this, then compare this guy with the priests and nuns who risk their lives and health working with the sick and poor in third world countries, it makes me sick. I would offer a suggestion to the Pope to send him someplace in the middle of nowhere to minister to the sick, but he is probably so devoid of empathy that he would do more harm than good. Perhaps permanent retirement to some mountaintop monastery for a life of silence, prayer and working in the garden would be sufficient.
Archbishop Myers’ incomprehensible appointment
…….the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, a priest who had been convicted of groping a young man has now been appointed as co-director for the archdiocesan office of clergy formation. What could Archbishop John Myers possibly have been thinking? How could he be so utterly insensitive?
To be sure, the conviction of Father Michael Fugee was overturned on appeal. But rather than risk another trial he made a plea agreement with prosecutors and agreed to enter a counseling program for sex offenders. So a sex offender is heading an archdiocesan office. And not just any office, but an office designed to guide other priests in their spiritual formation. Is this not exactly the sort of scandal that the Dallas Charter was supposed to prevent?
An archdiocesan spokesman said that Archbishop Myers has full confidence in Father Fugee, even while emphasizing that the priest is now in a position where he does not have access to children. Does that really bespeak full confidence?
Under the Dallas Charter—the policies the American bishops approved at their June 2002 meeting in Dallas, in a panicked response to public outcry about the burgeoning scandal—a priest who is credibly accused of the sexual abuse of children should be removed from public ministry. Yet here was Father Fugee, who had been not only accused but convicted by a New Jersey jury, serving in an office of the archdiocese. It emerged that he had previously served as a hospital chaplain, with unsupervised access to children, even after the conviction. The archdiocesan review board had cleared him for ministry, as had the archbishop. The case vividly illustrates that the policies put in place by the Dallas Charter provide no reassurance at all to the faithful, if the policy-makers do not prove themselves trustworthy.
There’s more. During Father Fugee’s trial, the jury heard a statement in which the priest said that he was homosexual or bisexual. (An appeals court would later cite concerns about that statement as a reason for overturning the verdict.) So now a priest who is homosexual or bisexual, who is in a sex-offender program, is dispensing advice to other priests in Newark, and potentially dealing with the priests who are coping with similar problems. Is there any reason for confidence that he is offering mature spiritual counsel? Can we assume that he would respond properly to other cases in which priests were accused of misconduct?
The astonishment, bewilderment, and outrage that greeted the news from Newark is completely understandable; the complacent reaction from the archdiocese (“We have not received any complaints from the prosecutor’s office…”) is appalling.
Right now, one of two things is true. Either
The phone is ringing off the hook in the office of Archbishop Myers, as other bishops all around the country call to ask him what on earth he has done, and demand that he quickly undo it. Or…
Ten years into the greatest crisis the Church has faced since the Reformation, most American bishops still haven’t begun to grasp the problem.
There is no third option. And as I look at those two possibilities, I shudder to think which is more likely. God help us.
“Ten years into the greatest crisis the Church has faced since the Reformation, most American bishops still haven’t begun to grasp the problem.”
Eddiestinson,
While I think that is the likeliest option above, I can suggest another. Father Fugee has some really damaging evidence on Archbishop Myers.
What once was is not now….. The archbishop of Salzburg is without a residence…. And the Atlanta archbishop was forced to put his home on the market… For about 2.2 million….. People are wising up….