I'm saddened by the guilty plea by Chicago's Father Dan McCormack -- a guy I spent four years with in the seminary. Not just because someone I regularly broke bread with has done something unspeakably evil, but also because the sentence imposed seems unconscionably short to me.

Voicing no contrition for his crime, Rev. Daniel McCormack, the Chicago priest whose sexual-abuse case rocked the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese and led to an overhaul of church policy, pleaded guilty to molesting five boys and was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

With McCormack's admission of guilt, church officials vowed to permanently remove him from the priesthood.

As part of the plea deal worked out with prosecutors, McCormack, 38, pleaded guilty to five felony counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and was promptly sentenced by Circuit Judge Thomas Sumner to 5 years in prison. He was taken from the courtroom to begin serving the sentence.

Within an hour of the court proceeding, church officials said they would move quickly to petition Rome for McCormack's removal under church law. But they said they hope McCormack, the former pastor of St. Agatha Church on Chicago's West Side, will request his own termination.

Frankly, this sentence is not nearly enough in my book -- Dan needs spend a lot more time in prison than this, because he has admitted to raping no less than five boys. A year a piece is shockingly short -- though admittedly more than he would have gotten had he been a buxom young female school teacher.

I'm also angry that Dan McCormack was not required to stand up like a man and admit to the exact nature of his crimes -- and that his attorney even tried to get the true extent of his abuse of these children kept off the record. Not only that, but McCormack refused to even offer a word of apology or contrition for what he had done. I always considered Dan to have an arrogant streak, I am horrified that it runs this deep. Indeed, had I been the judge this would have been sufficient basis to reject the plea deal and move forward so that Dan McCormack could have received a longer, much more punitive sentence for his indefensible deeds.

I hope, and I pray, that Dan spends every single day of this sentence behind bars -- and that he spends each and every one cowering in a corner, praying that the guards can keep the other inmates from using him like he used those little boys.

Posted by: Greg at 03:14 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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