I don't see why the Catholic Church, as an institution, should be held financially liable in these sex-abuse clergy cases. Instead, I think they should be treated as criminal cases, although very few would succeed on that score.

Goldschmidt abused a minor but I don't see the city of Portland paying any damages (even though he was MAYOR at the time).

Innocent Catholic parishioners are ponying up the cash for these awards and I think that's unfair. The little old lady putting her dollar in the collection basket thought she was doing it for "the poor."

Now, it's bait and switch time, and the sex-abuse plaintiffs (along with their lawyers) are raiding the collection box.

At the rate things are going, there won't be any Catholic property left, no churches, no schools, no community outreach programs.

That's not my understanding of justice.

The Catholic Church is on the hook not only because its priests engaged in statutory rape. It's also because its leadership knew about it and was grossly negligent in doing anything about it.

If Mayor Neil Goldschmidt knew that dozens of Portland police officers were taking sexual advantage of grammar school kids and he did nothing meaningful about it, then yes, the city would be liable.

If you feel you are "innocent" and don't want to contribute to the damages paid to the victims of the statutory rapes, you should stop putting money in the collection basket. I am sure many, many Catholics have done so -- you'll have lots of company. I continue to contribute to my parish, and I'm not offended by the prospect of the church paying just settlements to the ex-altar boys who were molested. If you see things differently, you should act differently.

But if we and our church are going to live and operate in this country, we must abide by its laws, including its tort laws. It's called the social contract. If a Catholic school catches fire, we don't call the Vatican Fire Department. If someone starts firebombing our churches, we won't be calling the Swiss Guard.

The church should settle the cases, or let them go to trial, and get on with its life. But it didn't want that. It wanted secrecy and a cheap way out, and it mistakenly thought that bankruptcy would provide that. So far, the plan is backfiring, and backfiring badly. Now the Spokane bishop has managed to flush out of the woodwork an alleged victim of his own, who probably would never have said a thing if it weren't for the bankruptcy.

He got some bum advice. He ought to fire his lawyers, start talking to some mortgage bankers about borrowing against his hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate (owned free and clear at the moment), and get this ordeal over with.

Jack,
Your analogy with Goldschmidt and the police is apt but it doesn’t go far enough. If Goldschmidt found out an officer was abusing minors and sought to cover it up by transferring the officer to a new precinct where he could prey on an unsuspecting new group of children, then it would more closely resemble what church leaders did here. Indeed, the charge I see mentioned most often, including about Ratzinger for actions before he became Pope, is obstruction of justice.

It wouldn't have been just one officer. There were multiple offenders in every archdiocese.

The alleged acts with minors are criminal matters, but nobody gets a financial recovery in a criminal case.

Of course every legitimate claim should be paid. A few generations ago, these things were routinely swept under the carpet and it's much better now that they're out in the open. But isn't a false claim possible where there are millions of dollars worth of real estate and sensitive issues? I did see the Family Abuse Prevention Act used to carry out a real estate rip-off in Columbia County. It can happen.

Jack, you make some good points but they don’t satisfy the issue of fairness that I was raising.
Of course, I feel I am “innocent” since I knew nothing of these crimes, nor did 99.99% of Catholic parishioners. Are you suggesting we share collective guilt because we belonged to the same church as these criminal priests?

No, the issue I was raising was who should pay for the crimes. Should that little old lady on Social Security pay, Jack? Is she guilty because she prays in the church that once had a pedophile priest?

I suggested that the priest be held criminally liable. You raised the conspiracy element, and I then say, the bishops and others in authority should be criminally charged as accessories.

But leave that little old lady’s frayed coin purse alone. She did nothing but give her weekly stipend (which she couldn’t really afford) out of a sense of charity to an institution that she believed was doing good in the world.

Patrick, here in America, we have a legal doctrine known as "respondeat superior." If an employee of an organization wrongfully harms someone in the scope of his or her employment, the organization is liable as well as the employee. It's been that way for centuries. And yes, those costs to get passed on to the "innocent" customers of the organization, even little old ladies. There's no exception for priests, bishops, or their churches. And no one to my knowledge is seriously suggesting any changes to those basic rules. It 's just the way it is.