Once again the revolving door of clergy abuse lawsuits is in the news, this time with a 17.6 million dollar settlement by the Catholic Church Diocese in Vermont to settle their latest round of sexual abuse allegations. Suing the Catholic Church is big business for some law firms these days, as it appears to pay handsomely.
The Church has been somewhere between a rock and a hard place for the past thirty years, under constant attack from the left for its anti-abortion and anti-homosexual stands, while simultaneously targeted in one lawsuit after another for allegations of sexual misconduct between priests and children under the age of seventeen. The current Vermont suit settles the offenses of one priest and involves 26 alleged victims. By my math that’s about 650,000 dollars per victim.
The Catholic Church has not been successful at sweeping these incidents under the rug. Unlike Wall Street, who simply pays quietly to settle their matters without ever admitting guilt, the Catholic Church admits the guilt, pays through the nose, and still gets a media pounding. The monetary pounding is huge, an estimated 2.6 billion dollars in awards and settlements since 1950, and that attracts a lot of morally outraged John Edwards.
A 2004 John Jay College of Criminal Justice report, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, quantified the problem.
1 - Between 1950 and 2002 there were 10,667 allegations against 4392 Priests
2 - 6700 allegations were substantiated
3 - 384 Priests were criminally charges - 200 convicted - 100 served time in jail
The Catholic Church’s problem mirrors secular society. About 2 to 4 percent of potential offenders get through their screens and in their populations. Just like in schools and other businesses interacting with children, they abuse and molest some children. But only about 6 percent of the allegations against priests actually result in criminal charges. Over one billion settlement dollars was paid out by the church during the time covered by the report. Clearly the “outrage” is more settled with money than with time served in jail.
The political leadership on the left is especially quiet. While they usually attack religion, this involves a mainstream church with millions of voters. Also, the charges involve a favorite focus group’s lifestyle - homosexuality. This past February, 26 Congressmen and women sent a letter to the Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts, officially protesting their discriminatory policy of “prohibiting gays and lesbians.” When endorsing interaction between gay men and boys, as they are, it’s pretty hard to be “outraged” when the inevitable happens.
What moral outrage there is, is aimed at the Catholic Church. They are unpopular with the media and they’ve still got deep pockets for pickings. To me that’s pretty convenient and pretty disgusting.
My solution is two fold. For the Catholic Church, I say, how about really screening priests as thoroughly as the Boy Scouts do, take the heat from the hypocritical left that’s inevitable, and treat the molesting of children as a crime, because it is. Secondly, how about allowing priests to marry. It’s not forbidden biblically, not even in the Catholic Bible. Peter (Catholicism’s foundational rock) was married. Why not ease the pressure in the obvious way?
I’m probably in a minority who thinks this is a moral outrage, but I’m also tired of the convenient argument that zillions of dollars should be paid in lieu of the pain the victim has to live with for life. Unless you treat the rest of society that way, that shouldn’t be a justification for financially sticking it to only the church. Victims of assault, robbery or school yard bullying have their lives as disrupted as any one else and they don’t get treated like lottery winners.
I could respect approaches much more that criminalize the offense and put away offenders, rather than approaching the Catholic Church as a lottery pool for lawyers. The church can make much better use of two billion dollars by actually helping society with it, and society will be better served if we actually begin putting away offenders.
Friday, May 14, 2010
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1 comments:
you say:
Victims of assault, robbery or school yard bullying have their lives as disrupted as any one else and they don’t get treated like lottery winners...
I'd like to reframe that. These unpleasant and trauma-inducing experiences are awful. But they're not in the same category as being repeatedly molested by someone in authority, someone you are taught to believe is Christ's mediator. These children felt "special" for being singled out. They were quickly overwhelmed by emotions they weren't developmentally ready to metabolize. Many of them won't be around to cash in on this lottery. They're either dead from drugs or leading stunted lives.
Robbery takes your possessions; assault is a grievous, violent sundering of your boundaries. These are traumas but with help they can be worked through and the victims can move on. Bullying is betweeen peers and isn't the same thing at all.
I know people who've been repeatedly assaulted by priests and they will never, ever step forth. What you've seen is about ten per cent of the reality.
I agree whole-heartedly that we have outgrown the mandatorily celibate priesthood. It was a mistake from the beginning and had we not been cut off from our Orthodox brethren, it might never have happened.
The *Roman*-style bureaucracy is frozen in place. It may even be fossilized past repair if it doesn't view this catastrophic damage as a wake-up call to throw open the doors and let the sunlight bleach out the horrors.
The charism of celibacy doesn't have to coincide with the charism of Holy Orders in the same person. A married priesthood would be a vibrant sign of God's grace working in the world of families.
And the center of gravity of Catholicism is moving south and east. China's home (underground)churches would never comprehend the hardship of celibacy. It's a cultural non-connect.
Same goes for Africa.
I know several people, forced to leave their ever-more-liberal mainstream Christian denominations, who have sadly turned away from Roman Catholicism as a choice because of the mandatory celibacy consequences. They joined the Orthodox church...Syrian, iirc.
BTW, criminalizing and putting away these offenders doesn't work. They're back on the street in a few years.
If the church could have made better use of 2bn dollars, it would have before this.
Maybe a sign that a church with that much money is so big it's bound to fail, hmmm?
Episcopal residences can be sold and the money can be put to building up society. Boston had to do that, if memory serves. Again, I saw a lot of good people leave...
...and, ironically, Ireland is going to be lost to the Muslims. Of all places!
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