UNITED STATES
Catholic Online
Catholic PRWire
Hanover, Penn., February 18 -- State legislators in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan and New York, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Minnesota and Massachusetts have introduced bills that might severely cripple the Catholic Church as an institution, hurting its 67 million members. If approved, these bills will lift or extend retroactively statutes of limitations and permit thousands of civil tort lawsuits to be brought against the Catholic Church.
"It's not fair to make innocent Catholics pay for the crimes of the guilty. Many of the faithful were not even alive when some of these sexual abuse cases allegedly took place," said Raymond Drake, president of The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), a Pennsylvania based organization of lay Catholics.
"We strongly believe that these bills are supremely unfair since the burden of the punitive damages will be borne by the Catholic faithful in general, not the individual criminals or their accomplices," said TFP president. "As a result, Catholic school children will be deprived of their schools to pay for the misdeeds of others. And the charitable works of the Church will be cut back to pay for settlements and attorney fees."