Galapogos--
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1823176,00.html
Basically, New Yorker, J. David Enright IV--a scion of blue-blood New York families Van Renselaer and de la Grange--is claiming that repeated sexual abuse at the age of 7 at the hands of a Catholic priest turned him into a homosexual.
Enright, supposedly worth millions, is suing the Catholic Church for $5 million in damages.
Enright claims that if he had not been sexually molested by this Catholic priest, he would today be living in a spacious home in Greenwich, Connecticut with a wife and four kids in private boarding school.
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I think that this is one case which the church will try like hell (no pun intended) to settle out of court.
If it proceeds to trial, it would be difficult to claim that the abuse never happened.
Father Romano, who became a chaplain to the Albany Fire Department, is now 65 and living in Florida. He was suspended by the diocese in 2003 after a church review panel found claims that he sexually abused children in the 1970s and 1980s to be credible.
If that hurdle is passed, there is the question of liability. Did the abuse make him gay? If they say no, to avoid liability, must they then claim that homosexuality is a naturally occurring variation, like left-handedness?
Would the church go to the best medical and scientific evidence available and perhaps even claim that homosexuality is genetically determined?
Perhaps they will stick to the latest, more "humanistic" dogma, that homosexuality IS God given, but that it is still inherently disordered, and a special, extreme, "Cross to bear" that God gives to gay people, due to Original Sin, and blah, blah, blah, and we love you all, but keep it in your pants, OK???
How could they answer this suit? I think it will be impossible to accept liability, and unthinkable to deny it because of the implications. That's why I don't think it will ever see a courtroom, unless Mr. Enright has other ideas.
Is Enright out to force the church into making a stance? Is this suit a reaction to the church's statements that the abuse scandal is predominantly about Gay priests having sex with adolescents and young men (many of whom, it is claimed, seduced the poor priests), rather than pedophilia?
Is Mr. Enright deluded or crazy like a fox? Is Enright trying to force the church to admit something?
The church has very publically announced it is going to keep gays from becoming priests. It is cracking down with a vengence on those gay priests and seminarians that already exist. I guess the "special" cross they bear is just a little too extreme, a little too distasteful to be tolerated.
Is this suit a defense of those priests and seminarians? I wish I knew. It will be interesting to see if this proceeds any further.