Restoring the Balance

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - November 23, 2007

At their annual meeting last week in Baltimore, the bishops of the United States received the preliminary findings of an independent, in-depth study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the "causes and context" of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

One noteworthy finding, according to lead researchers Margaret Smith and Karen Terry, is that "the idea that there is something distinctive about the Catholic Church that led to the sexual abuse of minors" is mistaken.

They pointed to an extensive seven-month study by the Associated Press of sexual abuse of minors in American public schools, which documented that between 2001-2005, there were over 1,800 cases in which public school teachers or administrators were disciplined for sexually abusing students. That figure contrasts with the 4,392 sexual abuse allegations lodged against Catholic priests nationwide over the 53-year period between 1950 and 2002.

The Associated Press study also discovered that, in many cases, administrators tried to handle the disputes quietly, working out deals with the parents to allow the teachers to resign their positions without further action. Such agreements enabled the abusive teachers to keep their freedom and their teaching certification, which allowed them to take up jobs in other districts where they were able to continue abusing children.

On the one hand, the disclosure that the sexual abuse of minors has proven to be worse quantitatively in public schools than Catholic institutions is no solace to those in the Church. As one bishop remarked during the bishops' meeting, it would be like a doctor telling his patient that his form of malignant cancer is no worse than his hospital roommate's lethal tumors; the magnitude of the abuse in public schools does not minimize the evil of the abuse within the Church. Those who care about children, moreover, are understandably sickened by the confirmation of high rates of abuse in public schools, since each instance is devastating to its young victim.

On the other hand, the recent revelations about the rate of abuse in public schools — and the relative lack of attention given to it compared to the frenzy in covering clergy sexual abuse — will surely strengthen the case that the Catholic Church has become the red heifer for a much larger social plague.

While Catholics should conduct themselves by higher standards — since Jesus, after all, called them to his standard of love which would distinguish them their conduct from others (Jn 15:13; Mt 5:43-48) — and should expect others to hold them to the norms of the Gospel, it is not fair for the Church as an institution to be treated by a different legal standard than other institutions. It clearly has been, not only with respect to other churches, but to public institutions, like schools, that also serve the common good.

In several states, for example, there has been a push to suspend the civil statute of limitations to allow enormous lawsuits, but only against private institutions. Civil cases against public school districts, for example, are either not permitted or the damages against them are capped. There's a good reason for this: legislators recognize that if they did not indemnify public institutions, for example, two things could happen. First, if local governments needed to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars for civil judgments, it would shut them down; all the good that public institutions do — not just in terms of education, but police and fire departments, sanitation, utilities and so much more — would be in jeopardy. Secondly, the ones who would be forced ultimately to pay for the settlements would not be the abusive teachers, but innocent taxpayers, and probably for generations. This would violate not only the typical American principle of fairness, but also the common good. As much as society justly wants to help those who have been harmed through sexual abuse recover, it cannot come with the unlimited risk of crippling institutions that have such an important role in serving the common good.

Those same just principles of fairness and the common good, however, have not been applied in recent years with respect to the Church. The judgments against the Church have been so enormous that five U.S. dioceses have needed to declare bankruptcy, seminaries and many other institutions critical to the Church's future and to her present charitable work have had to be sold, and the bill is being paid not by those who were wrongdoers but by the Church as a whole.

Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago, in an October homily for lawyers and judges at a Red Mass in Grand Rapids, Michigan, called attention to this inequity in straightforward terms. "While the sexual abuse of minors is a sin that must be addressed by the Church and a crime that must be punished by the criminal justice system, … the current approach of awarding large monetary damages to victims is not only contrary to the purposes of tort liability theory, but also place an excessive burden on the free exercise of religion for Catholics in the United States.

"If such purposes seek to punish wrongdoers and deter wrongful conduct, the settlement or award of civil damages is punishing the wrong people, namely, the average parishioner or donor whose financial contributions support the Church but who have no role in the supervision of clergy. Instead of supporting the parishes, religious and charitable works that these donors seek to support through their contributions, these monies are being diverted to pay claimants and their lawyers. Most of the bishops who were negligent in their supervision of clergy who offended 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years ago are long gone. Monetary damages taken from a not-for-profit entity do not punish the wrongdoers, but only serve to constrain the scope of the entity's charitable, religious and educational activities."

A partial solution, Bishop Paprocki argued, is to restore legal caps against private charities, so that the work of innocent and dedicated lay people, religious, and clergy in favor of the common good cannot be decimated by crippling financial judgments that the wrongdoers of yesteryear will never pay. There is a need to find the happy medium between the just fulfillment of obligations toward the recovery of a person who has been harmed and protecting the innocent in the Church from having to pay so much for the sins of others that they are no longer able to continue to benefit from and share in the Church's charitable mission in advance of the common good.

Such a balance wisely exists with regard to public institutions. It needs to be reestablished for private ones.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.