Justice Denied
By Elizabeth Eisenstadt-Evans
There's a difference, sometimes a big difference, between justice and the law. In June of 2012, Monsignor William Lynn, a high-ranking official in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, was convicted on one-count of child endangerment for providing a priest, Edward Avery, a venue in which he would go on to abuse a boy. Formerly the archdiocesan secretary for clergy, Lynn's case seemed precedent-setting at the time because, while he wasn't directly involved in abusing children, he was the person responsible for oversight of clergy in the archdiocese. Part of that responsibility, one would assume (as it turned out, wrongly), involved reporting abuse to secular authorities. Instead, Lynn transferred them from one church to another. Last week, Lynn's conviction was reversed by the state appeals court. This week, the same judge who sentenced him to serve- 3 to 6 years in prison, M. Teresa Sarmina, has set the terms of bail on which he can be released (she also ruled that he must be subject to electronic monitoring and give up his passport as Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams appeals the reversal). The appeals panel didn't suddenly decide that Lynn was innocent. In fact, they stated that he had "prioritized the archdiocese's reputation over the safety of potential victims of sexually abusive priests." Instead, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that the child welfare law in place at the time didn't cover supervisors (it was updated in 2007). Lynn has already served 18 months of his sentence, and is likely to soon be free from the Pennsylvania prison where he is serving it. As David Gibson at Religion News Service said in his analysis when news of the reversal broke last week, the verdict means that those who were most culpable for protecting perps rather than children have largely escaped any kind of punishment. "And therein lies the harsh reality of the clergy abuse scandal: Much like the financial scandals that rocked the nation after the recession of 2007, almost no one at the highest echelons of responsibility was ever brought to trial or even charged with a crime," Gibson wrote. While there actually might be laws under which many financial speculators could have been charged (but weren't) in the Lynn case, it seems the law wasn't sweeping enough to cover the misdeeds of someone who, according to testimony, was guilty, at the least, of significant sins of omission. In the words of the court ruling: "Again, the Commonwealth provided ample evidence regarding Appellant's pattern of intentionally mishandling other sexually abusive priests with the intent to shelter both the priests and the larger church from disrepute, thus giving rise to a permissible inference for the jury to draw that Appellant acted in conformity with that intent when dealing with Avery." In the Hebrew Scriptures, justice prompts the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus), God's plumb line (Amos), or even the Babylonian captivity (Isaiah), at least as it is interpreted by the prophets. And while Jesus exhorts his followers to show compassion to their foes and pray for those who show hatred, there is still an inexorable logic to Gods providence: The lowly will be lifted up and the meek will eventually inherit the earth. And the power brokers? Those who don't care for the vulnerable and the poor? Eventually they will be brought down. Sadly, the application of the ideals of justice in our most broken world doesn't always jibe with the words of the Hebrew prophets or the teaching of the Christian Messiah. That is in part because we don't live in a theocracy. To most of us, that's probably a blessing. But it's also because the ideals of fairness, and appropriate retribution tempered with mercy, so deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian principles (note I say principles, not beliefs) on which this nation was founded, are very hard to carry out in practice. Though hampered by political divisions, an often idolatrous respect for authority, and, candidly, a lack of moral courage, we still long for a system in which the punishment truly does fit the crime. In the case of the sexual abuse that has roiled the Catholic Church for decades, it has become clear thousands of children were sacrificial offerings to the dark urges of (mostly) men with a persistent and often almost untreatable illness. If this new judgment teaches us anything, let it be that we need to be more vigilant, less complacent, and courageous about protecting our kids. Though it might not lessen the outrage or sadness, the welfare of our children, frankly, matters more than what happens to a priest who has spent a year and a half in prison, and must walk under a cloud now that he appears to be free. That is no reason, in the end, to lose sight of our ideals. Let them draw us forward into a healthier, safer and more harmonious society – one in which only the guilty are punished. "Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an overflowing stream" (Amos 5:21-24).
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