Giving depositions -- it’s kind of like going to a Nazi concentration camp and being executed there, isn’t it?

No? You don’t think so?

Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn does.

In this jaw-dropping New York Times interview, the man who promoted man-boy love advocate Father Paul Shanley (now under indictment on multiple counts of child rape and indecent assault) actually has the gall to compare his travails to the suffering of Edith Stein, who died in Auschwitz in 1942 and is now a Catholic saint.

While he's at it, Daily also distorts the position of Voice of the Faithful, an organization formed in the wake of the sex-abuse scandals that seeks reform of the Catholic church:

One of the organization's stated goals, [Daily] pointed out, is to "change the structure of the church," which he interpreted to mean changing "the basic structures," an idea he distrusted.

"You've got to have a pope," he said, "and you've got to have a bishop." (emphasis mine)

I search in vain here or anywhere else at VOTF’s Web site for evidence that the self-proclaimed "centrists" of VOTF want to do away with the papacy or bishops. Daily’s characterization of the group is a grotesque distortion.

Daily goes on to say,

"I have no problem talking to people, and I have talked to them from the point of view of what they're feeling and I think I could do more of it, but having said that, I want to be part of the discussion. Don't shut me out. They want to make a point, and the point is their own participation in the church. And I just say it's got to include the bishop, and if it doesn't it's not the Catholic Church."

Members of Voice of the Faithful chapters said that far from shutting the bishop out, they would have been honored to meet with him. Bishop Daily said he might yet meet with them, but only when he felt ready.

"I'll make that decision," he said. "You know, I'll be me. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I just want to be me and I don't want to be shut out of anything."

He won’t talk to them, so they’re shutting him out?

Utterly appalling.