Disturbing accusations in New York

From the Village Voice:

Who knows whether Cardinal Edward Egan is sleeping soundly these days. But as head of the New York archdiocese—as the top Roman Catholic prelate in the state—he'd have every reason to be restless after the recent advent of a little-noticed lawsuit.
The suit, now pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, was filed on December 13 by Bob Hoatson—a 53-year-old New Jersey priest considered a stalwart ally among survivors of sexual abuse by clergy. Hoatson, the now-suspended chaplain for Catholic Charities in Newark, is suing Egan and nine other Catholic officials and institutions, claiming a pattern of "retaliation and harassment" that began after Hoatson alleged a cover-up of clergy abuse in New York and started helping victims.

But that's not all his lawsuit claims. Halfway through the 44-page complaint, the priest-turned-advocate drops a bomb on the cardinal: He alleges that Egan is "actively homosexual," and that he has "personal knowledge of this." His suit names two other top Catholic clerics in the region as actively gay—Albany bishop Howard Hubbard and Newark archbishop John Myers.

It's not that Hoatson has a problem with, as the suit puts it, "consensual, adult private sexual behavior by these defendants."

No, what Hoatson claims is that, as leaders of a church requiring celibacy and condemning homosexuality, actively gay bishops are too afraid of being exposed themselves to turn in pedophile priests.

Hoatson and his attorney save their worst accusations for Bishop Hubbard, accusing the other two bishops named of consensual sex between adults, but alleging that Bishop Hubbard solicited teenage boys for sex in a park. If this is true, such a terrible breach of pastoral trust absolutely needs to be brought to light, and I feel comfortable with erring on the side of believing the victimized. But in the Albany diocese, Bishop Hubbard is not percieved as guilty of the crime of failure to prosecute bad priests, even if he is guilty of the motives his accusers allege. He's been a leader in working toward diocesan transparency and outreach to victim/survivors of clergy abuse, and he's a personally involved and pastoral church leader. I deeply hope that these accusations are nothing but lies, but it's hard to understand why Hoatson and Aretakis would fabricate motives when the crime they claim isn't in evidence.