St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 15, 2011
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/article_ab01db21-ef78-5d99-a920-d23299f7e800.html
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| Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia |
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will convene its annual spring meeting today in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, Wash. On the agenda are some modest revisions to the child protection charter adopted by the bishops in 2002 in response to the clergy abuse scandals that rocked the U.S. church in 2001-2002.
The bishops say the charter is working and needs only slight tweaking. Overall, they say, the U.S. church now understands the importance of assertive, proactive intervention in any credible report of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest.
For $3 billion, it should understand. That's what the church has spent in the last 10 years defending itself and paying judgments and settlements to victims. Eight of the 194 U.S. dioceses have declared bankruptcy. New allegations of abuse have dwindled and — if a new study is correct — should continue to diminish, as the priests most likely to have abused children die or retire.
Last month, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which has been conducting an ongoing study of the crisis for the bishops, released its third round of findings. The study concluded that the vast majority of the abuse was perpetrated by men ordained in the 1940s and 1950s, priests who were not able to cope with new social norms that followed the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
This has been called the "Woodstock defense." It gives the bishops a pass for covering up problems and playing legal hardball with victims. Three cases with ties to St. Louis bolster that argument.
• On Sunday, Bishop Edward K. Braxton of the Diocese of Belleville released a pastoral letter explaining to Southern Illinois Catholics why he's continuing a longshot appeal of a $5 million judgement awarded to a man abused in 1973. With accrued interest, the diocese now owes James Wisniewski $6.3 million.
"We are not doing this to 'hide behind the law' as some might suggest," Bishop Braxton wrote. Instead, he said, the diocese is worried that the appeals court had found that a "fiduciary relationship" of trust existed between the victim and the church. That fiduciary relationship overrides the statute of limitations, opening up the diocese for damages for abuse that took place decades ago.
That could have huge financial repercussions, so we understand why the bishop would appeal. But the problem with hardball is that sometimes you get beaned.
• In the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Bishop Robert W. Finn — a protege of former St. Louis Archbishop Justin Rigali — has taken the extraordinary step of hiring former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves to investigate his response to allegations against a priest jailed last month on three counts of possessing child pornography.
• In Philadelphia, Archbishop (now Cardinal) Rigali himself stands accused by a grand jury of allowing as many as 37 priests to continue working despite credible accusations against them of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward children. Cardinal Rigali hired his own outside ex-prosecutor to run an investigation; she cleared only eight of the 37.
Maybe these three cases are atypical. Maybe the 2002 bishops' charter on protecting children doesn't need any more than a tweak or two. But when major dioceses are hiring special prosecutors to reclaim credibility, clearly the problems aren't over yet.
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