Of late, the Catholic Church has seen old news become today’s bad news. 

A few weeks ago news broke that the Church in Guam was rife with child sex abusers, something that had been a known secret for some time.

And this week, we all learned that a Catholic priest in Virginia, William Aitchenson, was a former KKK leader. This too was known by the Church, as records of the priest’s trial are public. 

When we reported on Aitchenson coming forward to admit to his past this week, we included the story two black newlyweds who Aitchenson terrorized while he was in the KKK.

They took legal action against Aitchenson 40 years ago, and won. The priest was sentenced to a short stint in jail, and was ordered to pay them $20,000. A few years later, President Reagan visited them to apologize on behalf of all Americans. 

The AP reports, however, that one person the couple never received an apology from is Aitchenson. Nor were they paid the $20,000.

The Church said this week that now that it knows Aitchenson never paid the couple in restitution, it will ensure that they receive what the priest owes.

After being inundated by the press following Aitchenson’s coming out, the couple, Phillip and Barbara Butler, held a press conference late this week about the incident and the priest’s admission.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Phillip Butler said of the letter the priest wrote owning up to his supremacy, “It was unbelievable.” 

Some in the Butlers' camp expressed confusion over the letter’s timing.

“The big question is: why is this just coming out now?” Ted Williams, the family’s lawyer said.

Aitchenson wrote in his letter that Charlottesville moved him to come clean. But Williams feels there is another reason. He believes that the Church pressured Aitchenson to come out in order to get ahead of a story.

The Church has admitted that a freelance reporter contacted it before the priest published his letter asking after Aitchenson’s relationship to the KKK.

“He was going to be exposed,” Williams said, according to The Washington Post, “And that is his rationale for coming out. Not because he had some epiphany or he had some ‘Amazing Grace’ moment.”

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” Barbara Butler said, “But you know what you did. You changed our lives a lot.”

The Butlers, however, are less worried about the timing of the admission than what will happen because of it.

They hope that Aitchenson will finger those who helped him install and burn the six-foot-tall cross on their lawn. His confederates were never caught. 

“What did we do to have them put a cross on our lawn?” Phillip Butler asked.

Barbara Butler added, “Is that much hatred in your heart that you would do something like that? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, so why are you doing this?”

The Butlers said that the incident rattled them, and that they never felt at home in their own home afterwards.

“We looked out our windows all the time … every little sound,” Phillip Butler said, “We did not ever know whatever was going to happen again.”

“It was a lot of trauma,” Barbara Butler said, “It really, really was. I will never, ever forget.”