Attorney Charles Molineaux urges the church to cease its opposition to extending statute of limitations.

In a strongly worded speech Molineaux said the Church should take the lead rather than resist bringing justice to those abused by the clergy. The speech by the St. John U graduate was remarkable in that it was given in front of Archbishop Chaput and others who oppose changing the statute of limitations. Here are excerpts. The entire speech is available by clicking the link.

"......In his speech, Molineaux said there are recognized exceptions for suspending or extending the fixed time in which to bring a lawsuit for an injury, he said. These include delayed discovery of the injury or the minor age or mental incompetence of the person potentially bringing the claim. Molineaux mentioned repressed memory of sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder as relatively recent arguments for extending the statute of limitation. "Initially, many loyal Catholics were appropriately skeptical in reaction to what seemed yet more psychobabble to prop up lately appreciated actionable facts," he said. "But there have just been too many verifiable cases which have emerged in different states and dioceses to ignore this development." If the mission of the church is to lead people to Christ, the institutional church should be more than merely apologetic toward victims of errant churchmen, said Molineaux. Quoting the Second Vatican Council document "Gaudium et Spes," the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, he said: "The order of things must be subordinate to the order of persons and not the other way around, as the Lord suggested when he said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." Molineaux said that the "crisis has always had two distinct aspects: abuse and cover-up. The abuse aspect involved a tiny percentage of priests; the cover-up aspect involved a majority of bishops. The overriding policy of the cover-up bishops -- some behaving criminally -- was the protection of the institutional church, its physical assets and the careers of its churchmen." "The institutional church has only acted in response to the legal compulsion of the secular courts and/or in response to media pressure and public outrage," he said. He urged the church to cease its opposition to extending statute of limitations. "Protecting the fiscal and physical assets of the institutional church from justice, via outmoded and arbitrary statutes of limitation, is not a consideration when it clashes with the mission of the church -- the bringing of men to Christ, by word and example," he concluded. "The institutional church should not dodge moral responsibility by invoking pragmatic rules as to the timing of lawsuits or by stalling with secrecy the production of record evidence," he added......"