A Refreshingly Candid Explanation of a Diocesan Bankruptcy

By Phil Lawler
Catholic Culture
January 14, 2014

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=717

Another American diocese filing for bankruptcy? Ho-hum. That’s become fairly routine, hasn’t it?

Yes, but look again.

Stockton’s Bishop Stephen Blaire announced that bankruptcy was the only realistic choice for the diocese, because of the sex-abuse scandal. As he put it:

Very simply, we are in this situation because of those priests in our diocese who perpetrated grave, evil acts of child sexual abuse.

Now that is new. It’s not new that the sex-abuse scandal has plunged dioceses into bankruptcy; we’ve known that all along. It’s new that a bishop is explaining the problem in such plain language.

How often have you heard a bishop explain that the funds required to settle sex-abuse lawsuits have not been taken from the diocesan budget, but from insurance and/or the sale of property? And when dioceses have closed parishes and schools, we’ve been assured that these moves were prompted by declining revenues and the shortage of priests, not the million-dollar legal settlements. The tortured logic of these explanations has done nothing to enhance the credibility of diocesan leaders.

Give Bishop Blaire extra credit for his reference to “grave, evil acts” rather than “boundary violations.” Candor helps.