Catholic Stories

[December]

That article is fascinating. So interesting to read how this event touched every aspect of this man's life. There will probably be parallels in the lives of modern children who've had similar religious experiences. It sounds like the coverage of this event was pretty intense in the 1940s, so I can't imagine how much reality TV, social media, the 24h news cycle, etc. amplifies similar stories today. 

[tabitha2]

A present example are the Hindu Kumari of Nepal.

[47of74]

A Catholic priest in Virginia has a Klan past.

Quote

A Catholic priest in Arlington, Va., is temporarily stepping down after revealing he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and burned crosses more than 40 years ago before joining the clergy.

In an editorial published Monday in the Arlington Catholic Herald, the Rev. William Aitcheson described himself as "an impressionable young man" when he became a member of the hate group. He wrote that images from the deadly white supremacist and white nationalist rally in Charlottesville "brought back memories of a bleak period in my life that I would have preferred to forget."

He sounds nice...

Quote

Aitcheson pleaded guilty to several cross burnings, including one in the front yard of an African-American family in the College Park Woods neighborhood and others at B'nai B'rith Hillel at the University of Maryland and the Beth Torah Congregation in Hyattsville. He was convicted and sentenced to 90 days, and ordered to pay a judgment of about $20,000.

Aitcheson also pleaded guilty to charges that he threatened to kill Coretta King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He told a U.S. District Court judge that he wrote to King in February 1976, telling her to "stay off the University of Maryland campus or you will die." According to a Post story, investigators said he wrote "Africa or death by lynching, take your pick, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan." He was a University of Maryland. student studying broadcasting at the time.

Spare me from all the nice guys who were impressionable young men.

[iweartanktops]

This gives me chills in the worst possible way. No words. 

[purjolok84]

The only nice thing I can say is that he has stepped down from his position. Behaviour like that needs to be addressed regardless of what he's doing now.

Meanwhile it's still crickets regarding all the priests/pedophiles ...

[Dandruff]

From the above-referenced article:

Quote

"I hope this evidently good man returns to active ministry," Franck tweeted. "He could do important work, especially with his history."

Yeah, his history sounds like a huge bonus for a career in ministry.  I'm glad they appreciate him...maybe they'll offer him a big raise?  You can't find those credentials just anywhere.

[SusanDelgado]

Wow. They really are everywhere, aren't they? 

[sawasdee]

In another article, a parishioner wrote that he was still espousing rather unpleasant ideas - and leading the singing of 'Dixie'. And he only outed himself because the parishioner was about to out him.

And now I can't find the article. It was in the WaPo, about two days after his own.

[sawasdee]

Found it!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-i-discovered-my-childhood-priest-was-in-the-ku-klux-klan/2017/08/25/c8ff3ff4-88e6-11e7-961d-2f373b3977ee_story.html?utm_term=.603f82e47b17

[Cleopatra7]

The author of the WaPo article says the priest in question was his history teacher when he was being homeschooled, which makes me wonder if he was in the traditionalist subculture. Not only do traditionalists love homeschooling, but a disturbingly large number of them are neo-Confederates. Pope Pius IX gave Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, a gift of a crown of thorns, because he thought he was a fellow agrarian elite being bullied by the evil forces of modernity. See this barf-tastic blog entry for more: 

http://catholicknight.blogspot.com/2009/02/pope-pius-ix-and-confederacy.html?m=1

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Pius IX was a true piece of work. It makes me mad when the RCC instead of condemning past errors and apologise doubles down and beatify or sanctify such twisted people. If Dante were to write his Commedia nowadays I wonder how many of them he would put in hell.

ETA so happy to see you again @iweartanktops I hope you're fine <3

Edited August 27, 2017 by laPapessaGiovanna

[Cleopatra7]

@laPapessaGiovanna, it's my personal theory that the RCC's drive to beautify and canonize all of the popes of the post-Papal States era stems from a desire to justify all of the questionable decisions that were made as the institution was dragged kicking and screaming into modernity. Doing so neutralizes critics in both the traditionalist and progressive wings, neither of whom have bought into the kind of extreme ultramontanism one sees among the First Things crowd (or at least they were ultramontane until Francis).

[laPapessaGiovanna]

It's fun how ultramontanism works here. The secularism is wrong, the RCC has monopoly of ethics and the pope is always right. Except when he says that we should show mercy towards the ebil gayz/the divorced remarried/the refugees and the immigrants, in these cases he's suddenly dead wrong.

[47of74]

8 hours ago, Dandruff said:

From the above-referenced article:

Yeah, his history sounds like a huge bonus for a career in ministry.  I'm glad they appreciate him...maybe they'll offer him a big raise?  You can't find those credentials just anywhere.

The only way he might have been acceptable for a career in ministry is if he had been clear from the get go about his racist past and worked every second of every day combating hate instead of hiding his past until it was clear that it was going to come out. 

14 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

It's fun how ultramontanism works here. The secularism is wrong, the RCC has monopoly of ethics and the pope is always right. Except when he says that we should show mercy towards the ebil gayz/the divorced remarried/the refugees and the immigrants, in these cases he's suddenly dead wrong.

With some of the far, far right traditionalists, not even JPII or Benny were Catholic enough for them.  Hell, even Lord High Ray isn't Catholic enough for some of the traditionalists.  

[NachosFlandersStyle]

Is the KKK still anti-Catholic? Not that it's surprising at all to see racism among Catholic conservatives, it just seems like most of them would take their bullshit to some other hate group.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo has published another article: "Priest who left KKK is testing parishioners’ ideas about redemption'

Spoiler

Doug Duncan experienced a shock when he first ran into his old classmate Bill Aitcheson at a reunion of their Catholic high school in the District years ago.

Aitcheson had been an exceptionally angry young man in high school in the early 1970s — downright hateful, recalled Duncan, a former Montgomery county executive. “He was a very bad guy — a skinhead, a racist. You stayed away from him.”

And yet he had returned to the button-down campus of St. John’s College High School as a priest — the very last person his classmates imagined would have become one. The fair-skinned, bespectacled Aitcheson’s demeanor had changed dramatically, too, as he related affably with his classmates, Duncan recalled. At another reunion, Aitcheson even celebrated Mass for his classmates in the chapel.

“He had a conversion, that’s the only way I can say it,” Duncan said. “Something happened to him and he just gave up everything he was before.”

In an essay published last Monday, the 62-year-old priest at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Fairfax City addressed this apparent transformation, revealing his college days in the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1970s and proclaiming himself saved by his faith.

“Racists have polluted minds,” Aitcheson wrote in the Arlington Catholic Herald. He referenced the recent deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and opined that for former racists who have repented as he did, “the images should bring us to our knees.” Aitcheson temporarily stepped down, the Arlington Diocese said, at his own request.

Aitcheson’s account of his racist past and conversion at first seemed like a straightforward tale of good overcoming evil. But as more details emerged, the story grew more complicated.

It turned out that he wasn’t just “a member” of the KKK, as his essay said, but a violent ringleader in Maryland who served time after burning crosses, threatening to kill Coretta Scott King and plotting to take down water systems, military installations and launch an armed revolution for which he’d stockpiled bombs and guns, according to authorities and published accounts. And while he wrote Monday that God had forgiven him, the African American family and Jewish groups he had terrorized said he never apologized to them directly nor paid them the $26,000 in damages a court had ordered decades ago.

The reason behind Aitcheson’s revelation also has been called into question. Maria Santos Bier, a freelance journalist and member of the Arlington Diocese, had contacted the diocese a few days before Aitcheson wrote the essay to ask about Aitcheson’s KKK history — and told them she might write about it.

In an essay published in The Washington Post, Santos Bier described her experience as a history student of Aitcheson’s while she was home-schooled in the early 2000s in Woodstock, Va. Aitcheson was a “fervent advocate of the Confederacy” who would joke about “Saint Robert E. Lee” in homilies at the church, and seemed so knowledgeable about history, Santos Bier wrote, that “I trusted him when he taught us that the Civil War was fought for states’ rights, not slavery; that the South’s cause was noble and just.”

Through all the revelations, Aitcheson has been publicly silent, declining daily interview requests through the diocese. Efforts to find him were unsuccessful. Church officials in Arlington and Reno — the two dioceses where he has worked since his ordination in 1988 — declined to speak at any length about him. Priests and lay leaders in the eight parishes and many congregants where Aitcheson has worked also declined to speak about him.

‘Billy just wants to forget’

William M. Aitcheson grew up in Howard and Prince George’s counties, one of four sons in a prominent, devoutly Catholic family before enrolling at the University of Maryland, where he studied television and film. He was still a student there at 22 when he was arrested as the “exalted cyclops” — or leader — of a Klan group in 1977. Police searching Aitcheson’s belongings found a publication titled “How to Kill,” along with a cache of weaponry and extensive survival gear.

By that point, Aitcheson had been deemed “too radical and violent” for the main KKK branch, which threw him out, according to FBI files. An undercover agent testified that the Aitcheson-led group, the “Klan Beret,” was readying to blow up a power plant and communications center at Fort Meade, Md., the local branch of the NAACP and private homes. Aitcheson was arrested after he gave the undercover agent a fully-built bomb intended for the NAACP, according to the FBI.

The group had burned six ­crosses in Prince George’s, including at two Jewish institutions and on the front lawn of a black couple, Barbara and Phillip Butler, newlyweds who had just moved into what was then a mostly white neighborhood in College Park.

In July 1977, Aitcheson was sentenced to 90 days in a federal medical prison with four years probation by a judge who told him, “I don’t believe you are a bad person.”

After serving his time, Aitcheson kept a low profile. He relocated to the church-run King’s College in Pennsylvania and graduated in 1979 with a degree in politics and government before teaching elementary and high schools in Missouri for two years, according to a 2013 bio by the diocese. An attorney for the Butlers at that time said it took two years after the couple filed their civil suit against Aitcheson in 1978 to find him. The suit was resolved in 1982 with $23,000 in damages awarded to the Butlers and the rest to his Jewish victims.

“I don’t see what purpose it would serve to rehash this business all over again,” Aitcheson’s father, William W. Aitcheson, a lumber company executive who is now deceased, told a columnist for the Baltimore Sun that year. “There are so many other groups that are just as bad, if you want to call it that. . . . Billy just wants to forget about it all now.”

The young Aitcheson soon made the dramatic decision to become a priest. He attended the Pontifical North American College in Rome and received a bachelor’s degree in sacred theology from the University of St. Thomas Aquinas, the diocese bio reads. Officials at King’s College, the seminary and St. Thomas declined to comment. Aitcheson’s mother, Ann D. Aitcheson, declined to comment. Numerous attempts to reach other relatives by phone were unsuccessful.

Aitcheson was ordained for what was then the diocese of Reno-Las Vegas in 1988 at age 33. In brief comments early this week, Reno diocesan spokesman, the Rev. Robert Chorey, said church leaders “understood at least part of his background” when they hired Aitcheson. “. . . I have no record of their thought process.”

In 1992, Aitcheson was arrested on charges of trespassing on the property of the West End Women’s Medical Group clinic in Reno. On Friday, Damon Stutes, the doctor who still runs the clinic, recalled the priest as a regular protester, who “yelled at” people coming in and acted “like a caged lion that was just holding himself back,” Stutes told The Post.

Aitcheson was convicted of trespass, fined $155 and ordered to remain at least 100 feet from the clinic. Later that year, he was transferred to the Arlington Diocese, one of the most traditional in the country.

The diocese declined to offer any details about what then-
Bishop John Keating knew or asked about Aitcheson. “At the time he began ministry here in 1993, the Diocese learned of his past as well as his sincere conversion of heart,” the diocese said in a statement.

Conflicted parishioners

In Northern Virginia, Aitcheson began a tour of at least six parishes. In interviews and in comments left last week on the Facebook pages of the Arlington Diocese and its Arlington Catholic Herald newspaper, Aitcheson was described by some as stern and bookish, while others viewed him as deeply empathetic in the confessional and a capable preacher.

Aitcheson was highly outspoken in favor of the death penalty, and preached and taught often about wars, including the Civil War, some parishioners recalled.

He referred to the latter as “the war of Northern aggression or “the war against the states,” said Chris Peer, 31, who was an altar boy under Aitcheson at St. John Bosco Catholic Church in Woodstock. The priest never talked explicitly about race, Peer said.

Aitcheson was a history buff in a region passionate about its history, displaying Civil War memorabilia he’d collected “since his youth” at St. John Bosco rectory, the parish said on its website.

The priest participated in a Memorial Day ceremony reenacting Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s final days and the Battle of Chancellorsville, a decisive victory for the Confederates, according to a 2004 story in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. Aitcheson, who had worked in a Fredericksburg parish a few years earlier, offered a prayer. “Then Aitcheson turned to the crowd,” the newspaper reported, “and said ‘Let’s sing the old national anthem.’ He raised his voice, and soon, everyone joined in,” singing Dixie.

In 2005, Aitcheson took a medical leave, moving between par­ishes upon his return. In June 2014, he came to St. Leo the Great in Fairfax City.

Last week, some parishioners were struggling to reconcile the priest they knew with his violent past and failure over decades to make amends to his victims, actions the diocese has now offered to broker and says Aitcheson is willing to do.

St. Leo parishioner Mark Krajewski at first praised Aitcheson as a “deep scriptural thinker” and said he felt unconflicted. But as he learned more about his priest’s KKK past, and his lack of apology and payment to his victims, Krajewski grew more ambivalent.

“I try to think good things about our priests and it’s difficult to learn of this information and think good things. . . . This will always be in my mind,” he said.

Others greeted Aitcheson’s account of conversion with empathy and praise for the priest and the diocese for coming out with a healing story during a time of racial division.

“I’d have no problem going to confession or getting spiritual direction from this guy — in fact, maybe more now,” said Ryan Ellis, 39, a parishioner at St. Rita Catholic Church in Alexandria. “This guy has seen hell and the other side.”

You know it's bad if someone is too "radical and violent" for the KKK. Also, the quote from his father really ticks me off. Of course, "Billy just wants to forget about it all now." Um, no, "Billy's" victims don't get to forget about it, so he shouldn't.

[Cleopatra7]

2 hours ago, NachosFlandersStyle said:

Is the KKK still anti-Catholic? Not that it's surprising at all to see racism among Catholic conservatives, it just seems like most of them would take their bullshit to some other hate group.

The second Klan (the iteration that was established in 1915 and collapsed in the 1930s) explicitly saw itself as a nativist, Protestant organization, and considered Catholics to be inherently unable to be good Americans because of their faulty theology and degeneratie racial stock. Basically, "white ethnic" Catholics were treated how Muslims are today. By the 1950s when the Klan was resurrected yet again to fight against civil rights, the anti-Catholic angle was largely dropped, presumably because blacks and Jews were seen as the bigger threat. White Catholics became unambiguously "white" after World War II, and that seems to have been what really counted as far as the pre-requisites for Klan membership were.

[Hane]

@Cleopatra7, this makes perfect sense in light of something I've mentioned elsewhere in FJ: Back in the '70s or '80s, I read a newspaper interview with the head honcho of a Connecticut KKK group. He identified as Catholic and said that the KKK "now welcomes Catholics." This pissed me off no end because a) the Catholic Church explicitly teaches that racism is a sin and b ) there was radio silence from the Archdiocese of Hartford regarding him and his ilk--while Planned Parenthood officials were being excommunicated.

[Cleopatra7]

7 minutes ago, Hane said:

@Cleopatra7, this makes perfect sense in light of something I've mentioned elsewhere in FJ: Back in the '70s or '80s, I read a newspaper interview with the head honcho of a Connecticut KKK group. He identified as Catholic and said that the KKK "now welcomes Catholics." This pissed me off no end because a) the Catholic Church explicitly teaches that racism is a sin and b ) there was radio silence from the Archdiocese of Hartford regarding him and his ilk--while Planned Parenthood officials were being excommunicated.

This double standard on racism vs abortion annoys me to no end, especially because the Catholic media claims that the latter is the biggest atrocity in history, while the former appears to be permissible as long as your group (however that's defined) isn't affected.

[Hane]

@Cleopatra7, both reasons why I segued from the Catholic Church to Unitarian Universalism. I tried to stay and remain a "loyal but dissenting Catholic" until my 50s, but finally had to decide to vote with my feet.

I'm proud to belong to a church that displays a Black Lives Matter banner right out front. I'm sad to think that this would be considered a "controversial, divisive" move in most mainstream churches.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Hane
Ineptitude

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo published an updated article: "Priest who burned crosses as a Klansman never paid court-ordered damages to victims. Now the order has expired."

Spoiler

The $26,000 that a federal judge ordered a member of the Ku Klux Klan to pay in 1982 to an African American couple and two Jewish groups for a series of cross-burnings is no longer legally collectible because the statute of limitations has expired, legal experts say.

The former Klansman, William Marx Aitcheson, is now a Catholic priest in Fairfax, Va., and never paid the $26,000. He pleaded guilty to cross-burnings in Prince George’s County, Md., in 1977, records show, and was sued in federal court in Maryland the following year by some of the victims, including Barbara and Phillip Butler of College Park, Md. In 1982, U.S. District Judge Frank Kaufman of Baltimore granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, awarding the Butlers $23,000, and $1,500 each to Beth Torah Congregation and B’nai Brith Hillel Foundation of College Park.

All three parties said they never received any money from Aitcheson, and never heard from him again. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1988, and has been serving as a pastor in Virginia since 1993.

[Priest who left KKK is testing parishioners’ ideas about redemption]

There is no statute of limitations in federal law for civil judgments, so the state law where the case was heard determines the time limit, legal experts said. Under Maryland law, civil judgments expire after 12 years. In 1994, as the 12-year mark was approaching in Aitcheson’s case, the lawyer for the Butlers had the judgment renewed in federal court for another 12 years. But that renewal expired in 2006.

“The judgment has expired and therefore is not enforceable,” said David J. Cook, the author of a book on debt collection and lawyer for the Fred Goldman family seeking payment from O.J. Simpson for their civil judgment against him. “However, the expired judgment is still a moral and ethical obligation. If this guy’s a Catholic priest, he’s under an ecclesiastical obligation to pay that.”

Cook said someone could still sue Aitcheson to enforce the judgment, and see if Aitcheson invokes the statute of limitations. “His lawyer will tell him, ‘the press is going to crucify you,'” Cook said. “As a moral and ethical act, if not contrition itself, the defendant should waive the statute of limitation, stipulate to the revival of the judgment and pay something, even $50 a month. Putting money in the hands of another is penance by other means.”

Other lawyers familiar with Maryland, federal and collections law agreed that the statute of limitations on such a judgment is 12 years.

The Butlers’ lawyer, Ted Williams, said, “This case will proceed in two courts: the court of law and the court of public opinion. While the priest may or may not have a legal obligation, he certainly has a moral obligation. We will be seeking fulfillment of both obligations.” He said he would demand interest on the $23,000 owed to the Butlers.

Aitcheson has taken a leave of absence from his role at St. Leo the Great Church in Fairfax. The bishop of the archdiocese of Arlington, Michael F. Burbidge, sent a letter to St. Leo’s parishioners which was read at all of their masses last weekend, which said that Aitcheson “has acknowledged his responsibility to resolve the civil judgments arising from his actions in the 1970s in a just manner.”

Aitcheson has not spoken publicly other than to publish an essay in the Arlington Catholic-Herald last week acknowledging his past involvement in the KKK. An inquiry to the diocese from a free-lance writer about Aitcheson and his past apparently sparked the priest’s public admission.

...

In the civil suit, records show that Aitcheson did not contest that he was liable for his actions, but that he had no assets to pay any damages. Aitcheson wrote a letter to Judge Kaufman in 1981 saying that “This continued litigation has caused my family and me great concern, not allowing us to finally see an end to the suffering and humiliation we have endured as a result of my past transgressions.”

Acknowledging that he had no defense in the case, he noted that, “I own nothing…no real estate, no automobile, just a few dollars of savings to see me through my volunteer work.” Aitcheson also wrote, “I have been tried convicted and punished for my crimes, I am truly sorry for the harm I did.”

Aitcheson also claimed that “some of the charges and innuendoes were untrue,” and that, “Before my arrest, I had severed my activities with the KKK…I regret my association with that organization; my thinking has so totally changed in the last five years, it would be inconceivable for me to ever resume that part of my life.” Aitcheson was 22 when he was arrested and convicted, and 27 when the judgment was entered against him. He is now 62.

In a deposition in the case, he refused to answer any questions about his actions because he feared he could still be charged criminally, a transcript of the deposition shows. William Brennan, who represented Aitcheson in both the civil and criminal cases, declined to comment Thursday.

In the original lawsuit, the Butlers sought $50,000 in total damages, and the Jewish groups each sought $15,000. Kaufman, without conducting an evidentiary hearing, awarded $20,000 to the Butlers in compensatory damages and $3,000 in punitive damages, and $1,500 in punitive damages to each of the Jewish groups.

Cook also represented the families of Marines killed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, for which he obtained a $2.6 billion judgment against Iran, and he said other civil judgments relating to acts of terrorism are approaching their statute of limitations. He said Congress “could avoid this disaster” by passing a law which says that civil or restitution judgments arising from any act of terrorism, if registered or originated in federal court, “shall be free of any expiration date.”

 

Here is the text of the letter from the bishop that was read to parishioners at the church where Aitcheson served most recently:

Spoiler

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

As you are likely aware, in an editorial on August 21, 2017, Fr. William Aitcheson acknowledged and reflected on his past as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He left that life behind him 40 years ago and has since journeyed in faith to eventually become a Catholic priest. He has served faithfully and never has been accused of racist or bigoted comments while serving in our diocese.

Fr. Aitcheson’s past with the Ku Klux Klan is sad and deeply troubling. Racism is incompatible with the Catholic faith and has no place in our Church. With God’s grace, I pray that his message will reach those who support hate and division, and inspire them to new life in Jesus.

While Father’s story is one of redemption and conversion, he understood that sharing his message could cause distraction to the parish community. As such, he discerned it would be best to step away from his parish duties temporarily, and I have granted him that time.

Father has acknowledged his responsibility to resolve the civil judgments arising from his actions in the 1970s in a just manner.

I have informed Fr. Aitcheson of your prayerful support, which you shared through social media posts, emails, letters, and phone calls and he was most grateful. I will remain in dialogue with Fr. Aitcheson and will communicate his future plans to you once they are prayerfully discerned and determined.

Please be assured of my prayers for the entire Saint Leo Parish community especially at this time. May we remain united to our Lord Jesus Christ and ever dependent on His divine mercy and infinite love.

 

Sincerely in Christ,

Most Reverend Michael F. Burbidge
Bishop of Arlington

 

[GeoBQn]

Quote

While Father’s story is one of redemption and conversion, he understood that sharing his message could cause distraction to the parish community. As such, he discerned it would be best to step away from his parish duties temporarily, and I have granted him that time.

When someone doesn't actually want to apologize but they are forced into it, they apologize for "being a distraction."

Also, I thought when you became a priest, you had to resolve all of your worldly debts before entering seminary.  Or is that just if you join an order?

[Cleopatra7]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The WaPo published an updated article: "Priest who burned crosses as a Klansman never paid court-ordered damages to victims. Now the order has expired."

  Reveal hidden contents

The $26,000 that a federal judge ordered a member of the Ku Klux Klan to pay in 1982 to an African American couple and two Jewish groups for a series of cross-burnings is no longer legally collectible because the statute of limitations has expired, legal experts say.

The former Klansman, William Marx Aitcheson, is now a Catholic priest in Fairfax, Va., and never paid the $26,000. He pleaded guilty to cross-burnings in Prince George’s County, Md., in 1977, records show, and was sued in federal court in Maryland the following year by some of the victims, including Barbara and Phillip Butler of College Park, Md. In 1982, U.S. District Judge Frank Kaufman of Baltimore granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, awarding the Butlers $23,000, and $1,500 each to Beth Torah Congregation and B’nai Brith Hillel Foundation of College Park.

All three parties said they never received any money from Aitcheson, and never heard from him again. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1988, and has been serving as a pastor in Virginia since 1993.

[Priest who left KKK is testing parishioners’ ideas about redemption]

There is no statute of limitations in federal law for civil judgments, so the state law where the case was heard determines the time limit, legal experts said. Under Maryland law, civil judgments expire after 12 years. In 1994, as the 12-year mark was approaching in Aitcheson’s case, the lawyer for the Butlers had the judgment renewed in federal court for another 12 years. But that renewal expired in 2006.

“The judgment has expired and therefore is not enforceable,” said David J. Cook, the author of a book on debt collection and lawyer for the Fred Goldman family seeking payment from O.J. Simpson for their civil judgment against him. “However, the expired judgment is still a moral and ethical obligation. If this guy’s a Catholic priest, he’s under an ecclesiastical obligation to pay that.”

Cook said someone could still sue Aitcheson to enforce the judgment, and see if Aitcheson invokes the statute of limitations. “His lawyer will tell him, ‘the press is going to crucify you,'” Cook said. “As a moral and ethical act, if not contrition itself, the defendant should waive the statute of limitation, stipulate to the revival of the judgment and pay something, even $50 a month. Putting money in the hands of another is penance by other means.”

Other lawyers familiar with Maryland, federal and collections law agreed that the statute of limitations on such a judgment is 12 years.

The Butlers’ lawyer, Ted Williams, said, “This case will proceed in two courts: the court of law and the court of public opinion. While the priest may or may not have a legal obligation, he certainly has a moral obligation. We will be seeking fulfillment of both obligations.” He said he would demand interest on the $23,000 owed to the Butlers.

Aitcheson has taken a leave of absence from his role at St. Leo the Great Church in Fairfax. The bishop of the archdiocese of Arlington, Michael F. Burbidge, sent a letter to St. Leo’s parishioners which was read at all of their masses last weekend, which said that Aitcheson “has acknowledged his responsibility to resolve the civil judgments arising from his actions in the 1970s in a just manner.”

Aitcheson has not spoken publicly other than to publish an essay in the Arlington Catholic-Herald last week acknowledging his past involvement in the KKK. An inquiry to the diocese from a free-lance writer about Aitcheson and his past apparently sparked the priest’s public admission.

...

In the civil suit, records show that Aitcheson did not contest that he was liable for his actions, but that he had no assets to pay any damages. Aitcheson wrote a letter to Judge Kaufman in 1981 saying that “This continued litigation has caused my family and me great concern, not allowing us to finally see an end to the suffering and humiliation we have endured as a result of my past transgressions.”

Acknowledging that he had no defense in the case, he noted that, “I own nothing…no real estate, no automobile, just a few dollars of savings to see me through my volunteer work.” Aitcheson also wrote, “I have been tried convicted and punished for my crimes, I am truly sorry for the harm I did.”

Aitcheson also claimed that “some of the charges and innuendoes were untrue,” and that, “Before my arrest, I had severed my activities with the KKK…I regret my association with that organization; my thinking has so totally changed in the last five years, it would be inconceivable for me to ever resume that part of my life.” Aitcheson was 22 when he was arrested and convicted, and 27 when the judgment was entered against him. He is now 62.

In a deposition in the case, he refused to answer any questions about his actions because he feared he could still be charged criminally, a transcript of the deposition shows. William Brennan, who represented Aitcheson in both the civil and criminal cases, declined to comment Thursday.

In the original lawsuit, the Butlers sought $50,000 in total damages, and the Jewish groups each sought $15,000. Kaufman, without conducting an evidentiary hearing, awarded $20,000 to the Butlers in compensatory damages and $3,000 in punitive damages, and $1,500 in punitive damages to each of the Jewish groups.

Cook also represented the families of Marines killed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, for which he obtained a $2.6 billion judgment against Iran, and he said other civil judgments relating to acts of terrorism are approaching their statute of limitations. He said Congress “could avoid this disaster” by passing a law which says that civil or restitution judgments arising from any act of terrorism, if registered or originated in federal court, “shall be free of any expiration date.”

 

Here is the text of the letter from the bishop that was read to parishioners at the church where Aitcheson served most recently:

  Reveal hidden contents

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

As you are likely aware, in an editorial on August 21, 2017, Fr. William Aitcheson acknowledged and reflected on his past as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He left that life behind him 40 years ago and has since journeyed in faith to eventually become a Catholic priest. He has served faithfully and never has been accused of racist or bigoted comments while serving in our diocese.

Fr. Aitcheson’s past with the Ku Klux Klan is sad and deeply troubling. Racism is incompatible with the Catholic faith and has no place in our Church. With God’s grace, I pray that his message will reach those who support hate and division, and inspire them to new life in Jesus.

While Father’s story is one of redemption and conversion, he understood that sharing his message could cause distraction to the parish community. As such, he discerned it would be best to step away from his parish duties temporarily, and I have granted him that time.

Father has acknowledged his responsibility to resolve the civil judgments arising from his actions in the 1970s in a just manner.

I have informed Fr. Aitcheson of your prayerful support, which you shared through social media posts, emails, letters, and phone calls and he was most grateful. I will remain in dialogue with Fr. Aitcheson and will communicate his future plans to you once they are prayerfully discerned and determined.

Please be assured of my prayers for the entire Saint Leo Parish community especially at this time. May we remain united to our Lord Jesus Christ and ever dependent on His divine mercy and infinite love.

 

Sincerely in Christ,

Most Reverend Michael F. Burbidge
Bishop of Arlington

 

This is why I'm not convinced Aitcheson really changed all that much. Sure, he quit being a "lifestyle racist" by avoiding the KKK and not burning crossing, but if he was still going on about "the War of Northern Aggression" and such,  then it seems like his fundamental beliefs remained intact, albeit in a more "polite" manner. If Aitcheson had really experienced a change of heart, then he would have paid his damages and found other ways to make restitution to the individuals and communities he had harmed. Speaking from first-hand experience, white conservative and traditionalist Catholics in the US have a very high tolerance for anti-Jewish and pro-Confederate views, so Aitcheson would have blended right into this subculture and not pinged anyone's creep radar. It seems more like he just wanted to create a new identity that was more respectable than his previous one, while retaining all of his odious beliefs.

[Cleopatra7]

The case of Edgardo Mortara was a cause célèbre in the nineteenth century and is still a sore point in Catholic-Jewish relations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortara_case

The TL;DR account is that Mortara was a young Jewish boy living in the Papal States. He became gravely ill and his Catholic nurse baptized him to "save his soul." The authorities caught wind of this and kidnapped Mortara to ensure that he would be raised as a Catholic, and not as a Jew in his birth family. The kidnapping outraged much of the West and seemed to confirm the view that the Catholic Church and the papacy was reactionary by nature. Pope Pius IX took a personal interest in Mortara's education, and the boy would eventually become a priest and died in a Belgian monastery in 1940. There are rumblings to have Pius IX canonized, and whenever such discussions come up, so does the Mortara kidnapping. 

Recently, Romans Cessario, a conservative priest and theologian, wrote an article in First Things defending Mortara's kidnapping:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/02/non-possumus (original article)

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/some-catholics-are-defending-the-kidnapping-of-a-jewish-boy/551240/ (article summing up the controversy)

Quote

Those examining the Mortara case today are left with a final question: Should putative civil liberties trump the requirements of faith? We should be grateful if that question does not become pressing, but we cannot assume it will not. Christians who are tempted to side with the enlightened critics of Pio Nono should examine how much they themselves prize the gifts of supernatural grace that ennoble human nature.

(quote comes from First Things article)

As the Atlantic article points out, those Catholics who defend the Mortara kidnapping do so out of the belief that god's law trumps human rights or civil liberties. Granted, Cessario is Italian and from a completely different culture than the US, but that an American Catholic publication would publish something like this indicates that the rhetoric about "religious liberty" is purely utilitarian, and that certain religions (i.e., Catholicism) should receive more freedom than others.

ETA Here are some more useful links:

First Things' reply to the controversy (i.e. some of my best friends are Jewish): https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/judaism-christianity-and-first-things

The Forward, a secular Jewish publication: https://forward.com/fast-forward/391967/catholic-magazine-justifies-kidnapping-converting-jewish-baby/

[NachosFlandersStyle]

From the Atlantic article:

Quote

So what’s driving some conservative intellectuals, like Cessario and Messori, to defend it? Anti-Semitism does not appear to be their motivation. “I hold Jewish people and the Jewish faith in high regard,” Messori told me.

Yeah, sure.