Poli-ticks

Diocese is using deflection rather than reflection

By Arlene Violet
Posted 9/17/17

The Diocese of Providence is using an interesting technique to deflect responsibility for the sorry state of affairs of the pension system it promised its employees at St Joseph’s Hospital and …

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Poli-ticks

Diocese is using deflection rather than reflection

Posted

The Diocese of Providence is using an interesting technique to deflect responsibility for the sorry state of affairs of the pension system it promised its employees at St Joseph’s Hospital and Fatima Hospital. A female spokesperson said that the diocese shares many of the questions and concerns expressed by the unions and the employees. She added, "The Diocese of Providence is not currently, and has not been responsible for the ownership, management, or oversight of the pension funds in question." She and I agree about one thing: the diocese has not been responsible — but not in the way she means it.

She is resting her argument that the diocese is not responsible on the legal fig leaf that the separate corporation which runs the pension is not a diocesan entity. Of course, the lay folks who have been on that entity have taken their marching orders from the Bishop for years. I consider myself an expert on the inner workings of the Catholic Church and the power of the bishopric. As a young lawyer I sued the Bishop of Fall River for his sudden closing of a day care center because he wanted to rent it for city offices. He peremptorily locked up the facility without notice during a time when Fall River had an 18 percent unemployment rate and the women who were working in the mills now had no place to drop off their children. The bishop was ordered by the court to reopen the day care center since he was legally wrong. Bishop Daniel Cronin threatened to excommunicate me and the director, another Sister of Mercy, if we did not withdraw the lawsuit. We refused. He then threatened to evict all the Sisters of Mercy from the diocese if we didn’t back down. We didn’t. With the backing of my then religious order, and only because I had won $1 million in restitution for consumers who had been victimized by various schemes, he didn’t follow through with the threat. Many nuns and consumers picketed the diocese on our behalf until he relented. He, nonetheless, had the power to implement either punishment.

When I ran for Attorney General with the backing again of my religious order, the then-Bishop, Louis Gelineau, trumped their support by having the Vatican remove me form the roster as a Sister of Mercy. My religious order was also a separate “corporation” but he had the ultimate power. Similarly, the St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island, Inc. is “managed” by diocesan appointees who do the bidding of the bishop.

The diocese maintained that it did not have to comply with ERISA, the federal law that governs oversight of pensions, because it was an exempt entity. For a so-called beacon of justice, it was strange that the diocese didn’t want to meet the minimum protection requirements for its workers. Instead, the diocese has invoked the mantra that the pension should escape federal scrutiny because it is a church entity that maintains the pension. This diocesan assertion that the first amendment guarantee of freedom of religion inoculates it from scrutiny is a direct contradiction to its now espoused position that it had nothing to do with the demise of the pension.

The Bishop wants it both ways.

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.

Arlene Violet

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