10/2/07 - Posted from the Daily Record newsroom
Whistleblower priest truly a hero

To the Editor:

The letters to the editor and the column by Abbott Koloff about the Rev. Kenneth Lasch have been appropriate and well-deserved acknowledgments of a great priest.

It's too bad that his fellow priests and bishop, for the most part, want him to disappear. Unfortunately, the institutional Catholic Church has become the equivalent of Enron, and unless and until the "power brokers" in the church are held criminally and civilly responsible on a mass scale for the crimes they have committed, Lasch and other good, holy priests will be held hostage by the stench of corruption and deceit.

Lasch and other "whistleblowers" are treated like lepers instead of as the heroes they are. In many Catholic dioceses, some in our own backyard, there are diocesan-sponsored support groups for pedophiles and priests with AIDS, but the priests who are survivors of priest sexual abuse or speak out against injustice are marginalized, maligned, and even "fired" for speaking out. It's time for the "sheep" to say enough is enough.

REV. ROBERT M. HOATSON

West Orange