As I read it, Mr. Slevin’s take on this is that, given the possibilities resident in this matrix of connections [Philly DA-Smith(Archdiocese)-Rendell(DNC and all Philly-PA political levels)], the Archdiocese was somehow actually a directing force acting on the Philly trial. Thus then that the prosecution’s poor performance and strategizing of the case is attributable to the DA having ‘thrown the fight’ at the behest of the Smith-Rendell-Archdiocese connection.

My take had been – and presently remains – that the Rendell connection indicates a possible national-political strategy: playing to a ‘base’ (‘liberals’, including ‘progressive’ Catholics and victim-advocacies) while appealing to undecided law-and-order voters who might vote Republican in the ‘swing’ state of Pennsylvania. Thus that the poor and weird prosecutorial strategy and conduct of this case (and also the statements and behaviors of both judge and prosecutors) were deliberate, secure in the knowledge that major political power and influence was on their side.

I fully agree with Mr. Slevin that further investigative reporting is greatly to be desired here.

My initial thoughts are that if the Archdiocese wielded sufficient power to so greatly influence the case then it could have gone further and squashed the whole thing, and could have prevented that long stretch of the trial devoted to reading into the record all those prior cases or stories about the cases involving matters that pre-dated the tenure of either of the accused.

But it is surely possible (although it yet remains to be demonstrated) that this trial and this case are the result of a mutual effort to satisfy two significant but conflicting agendas: to play to various demographics politically, while not greatly damaging the Archdiocese. Thus Msgr. Lynn winds up the small-fry to take the heat, who may yet wind up either with a reversed-conviction on appeal, or a sentence that will not include prison-time (incarceration for any popularly-conceived ‘pedophile’ carries hardly insubstantial dangers of great physical harm at the hands of informal ‘inmate justice’).

In this scenario, the usual victim-advocacies (themselves a congeries of interests and agendas) would be allowed to carry on their usual Standard Operating Procedures on the surfaces of this whole affair in order to glean what they can, like remoras making the best of it for themselves while riding a shark with a life and agenda of its own.

Hard to tell at this point, but I would not rule anything out.

But, however all this works out, it is clear that behind this case there was much much more going on than any single and simple Correct Narrative. The Church may have been involved, but surely no matter how it works out politics was certainly very powerfully involved.

Thus, I would say, the insistent (and desperate?) efforts to spin this case as a victory for the advocacy-agenda (which itself is not necessarily congruent with the victims’ desires – a congeries which also have a life and agenda of their own).