Talk:Sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Removed from Archdiocese page
As per talk on that I page, I have removed from it;

'''In 1978, Father Edward Avery was accused of abuse of a sixteen year-old boy. In 2011, he was named in a grand jury indictment along with another Father Charles Englehardt and Bernard Shero, a lay teacher, of sodomizing a ten year-old boy in 1998 in Saint Jerome Parish. Avery was laicized in 2006 as a result of his troubles.

A 1994 internal memorandum listed 35 priests who were suspected or accused of abusing children. Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua ordered all copies of the document destroyed, but one was found in a archdiocese safe in 2006. Of those mentioned, only one, Monsignor Richard T. Powers who was still at that time active in the ministry. It is not clear if any action was taken against the monsignor.

Father William Ayres was accused in 2011 of abusing a minor in the late 1990s while at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. He is also accused of a second case of abuse at about the same time at Incarnation of Our Lord Parish.

In 2006, Father James J Brennan was accused of sexual abuse in 1998. In 2011 he was charged by a Philadelphia grand jury with the rape of fourteen-year-old boy in 1986. The victim later attempted suicide. Father Brennan's case has been sent to the Vatican to be considered for laicization.

On February 10, 2011, a grand jury accused the Archdiocese of Philadelphia of failing to stop the sexual abuse of children. A church official, Monsignor William Lynn, was charged with endangering the welfare of children while two other priests, Edward Avery and Charles Englehardt were charged with rape and indecent assault of a minor.

Paul, in Saudi (talk) 03:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I've had to remove a list of names from the above - the other names seem to relate to charges, but the list that was in the comment before only related to "credible allegations", without any evidence of formal legal proceedings. This suggested BLP problems, especially given the source, so I had to refactor accordingly. My apologies for any problems this may cause. - Bilby (talk) 08:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Do what you think is best. From my Saudi Listening Post, my understanding of the details of all this is probably a bit garbled. The stuff I wrote I mostly used to try to set out the facts in some sort of chrono order. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 09:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Please review regarding Msgr. Lynn
I find: "Msgr. William Lynn, the pastor of St. Joseph Church in Downingtown, was arrested in February, 2012, indicted in mid-March and, more than a week after the indictment, put on administrative leave by the Archbishop Rigali."

Rigali has been cardinal since 2003, thus would be referred to as Cardinal even if he was still the Archbishop (of Philadelphia). But Rigali retired last year, and Most Rev. Charles Chaput, OFM Cap, was named to succeed him. Please check the dates regarding Msgr. Lynn. Would that be 2011, not 2012?

Lynn back in jail
I forget how to format footnotes, but here's info on today's AP story: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PRIEST_ABUSE_APPEAL?SITE=AP Apr 30, 11:46 AM EDT MONSIGNOR HEADED BACK TO PRISON ON CHILD ENDANGERMENT CHARGE BY MARYCLAIRE DALE ASSOCIATED PRESS "(Lynn) ultimately could be exonerated, and he'll have done his whole sentence. There are enough unusual issues in this case," defense lawyer Alan Tauber, one of Lynn's trial lawyers, said as Lynn was handcuffed and taken into custody.

-173.16.85.205 (talk) 19:05, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Should the article be renamed, or the new section moved?
This article has a very long (and mostly new) section 2016-2018 investigation in other Pennsylvania dioceses. It covers the 2016-2018 investigation into six dioceses in the state of Pennsylvania. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is not one of the six being investigated. So it would seem that this section doesn't belong in an article entitled "Sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia".

I can see four options:

1. Rename the entire article "Sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Pennsylvania." This expanded article would then properly include the new material.

2. Keep the current article focused on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Create a brand new article that covers the investigation into these other six dioceses. (Each article would have a cross-reference to the other.)

3. Keep the current article's name, and keep the non-Philadelphia section in it. (Perhaps this could be justified by the fact that these six dioceses are suffragan dioceses of Philadelphia; in other words, the Archbishop of Philadelphia is the metropolitan bishop of the other bishops in the state.)

4. Delete this entire new section entirely. Document the 2016-2018 abuse saga in the six separate diocesan articles (Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown, Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton, Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, Roman Catholic Diocese of Erie) and nowhere else.

Opinions? Votes?

My vote: I think that 3 is a bad idea. Centuries ago, a metropolitan had a certain amount of authority over his suffragan bishops, but today they don't. Documenting abuse from the Diocese of Erie in an article about the Archdiocese of Philadelphia would therefore be analogous to documenting facts about Missouri in the Louisiana article, on the grounds that Missouri was part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. I also tend to dislike option 4. There is a grand jury probe run by the State Attorney General that covers six dioceses, and therefore there's a unified story to tell: for example, the Diocese of Harrisburg has responded to the probe several times in ways that affect the entire investigation, not just their diocese. But I don't have an opinion whether option 1 or 2 would be better. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 01:51, 5 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I incline toward 2, with a link to the Philadelphia article, but either 1 or 2 is a necessary upgrade. Thanks. Swliv (talk) 11:49, 14 August 2018 (UTC)


 * What would a new article be called? "Sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Pennsylvania Except for Philadephia" sounds silly, so I was thinking maybe simply  "Sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Pennsylvania".  Then the very first section on that page would be "Archdiocese of Philadephia", which would be blank except for a link to this Philadelphia article.  Does that seem good? &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 19:54, 14 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Update: I looked at all the similar articles -- they are listed here].  To be consistent with the names of the others, the following seems best:
 * 1. The current article will be renamed from "Sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia" to "Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia".  In other words, the word "Roman" will be dropped, since it's not in any of the similar articles' titles.  (This is also consistent with the fact that the church's official name is Catholic Church.)  A majority of the comparable articles do not capitalize "diocese"/"archdiocese", but some of them do, and I believe that the capitalized version is actually correct, so it seems best to keep the capitalization as "Archdiocese."
 * 2. The new article will be named "Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic dioceses of Pennsylvania".  Note that here, "dioceses" is not capitalized, because the word "dioceses" is being used generically in this title. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 00:34, 16 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Done! That was more work than I expected.  But we now have two very good articles, and I spent the last two hours comparing the new Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic dioceses of Pennsylvania with the individual articles on the six dioceses, and making sure that the relevant information appears in both of them. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 08:08, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Copyright cleanup
Content added by has been removed from this article for copyright reasons. In spite of warning, the individual using this IP has persisted in copying content from copyrighted sources without compatible licensing to Wikipedia. Please do not restore any removed text without first ensuring that the text does not duplicate, closely paraphrase or plagiarize from a previously published source, whether the one cited or another (issues have been detected from other sources than those named). Based on the editing pattern of this person, we cannot make the assumption that the content is usable. You are welcome to use sourced facts that may have been removed to create new content in your own words or to incorporate brief quotations of copyrighted material in accordance with the non-free content policy and guideline. See Copy-paste and Contributor copyright investigations/67.184.212.160. Thank you. --💵Money💵emoji💵💸 02:20, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Chicago which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 11:34, 29 November 2022 (UTC)