How The Roman Catholic Church Attacked Albany, NY - Over and Over...

How Rome’s Outpost on the Hudson Perfected the Art of Holy Plunder

There’s a locked room in the chancery of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany that tells you everything you need to know about American Catholic power in decline. No gold chalices, no jewel-encrusted reliquaries, no illuminated manuscripts worthy of a Medici cardinal’s envy. Just filing cabinets. Rows and rows of filing cabinets documenting, with the meticulous bureaucratic precision that would make any Vatican functionary proud, which priests had violated which children, when, and how often.

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard kept the key for forty years. And when he finally died—having just married a woman in what can only be described as his final ecclesiastical middle finger to Rome—that locked room became the Rosetta Stone for understanding how an entire regional culture of Catholic institutions learned to operate: document internally, lie externally, and when the bill comes due, file for bankruptcy and blame the lawyers.

Because here’s the thing about Albany’s Catholic establishment that no…