As part of the bankruptcy settlement over its liability for child sex abuse by priests and coverups by superiors, the Archdiocese of Portland agreed to make public secret files in its possession relating to the many reported incidents of such misconduct. This was a big part of the recent announcement that the tort cases had been settled and the church's declaration that "the healing will now begin, dammit."

Today it became clear that the church is still quite comfortable looking like it's jerking people around. It's going to release some documents in dribs and drabs, make it difficult for anyone to find what they're looking for, and hold back as much as it can get away with.

The O has the story here. The church's website dumps out papers with no organization, rhyme or reason here. The O at least sorts them out by major offender on this page.

The lawyer for some of the victims says he feels he's being "sandbagged," and the spokesman for Archbishop John Vlazny is being as slippery and elusive as ever:

Bud Bunce, spokesman for the archdiocese, defended the release of the documents and said they demonstrate that the archdiocese has been reasonably open about priest abuse since litigation started.

"We think this goes towards refuting that we're hiding things," Bunce said....

Bunce said the archdiocese probably would release more documents, but he did not know details.

"That's all that's been cleared for right now," Bunce said. "There are potentially more, but I don't know how many or what they are."