NY Lawsuit: Catholic Clergy Sex Abuse

I know I will create heartburn with many Catholics in saying that because of the misuse by Catholic theology of the scripture concerning remitting sin. I believe that only applies to sin against us personally, not sin against others. One Catholic I work with told me that a Catholic Priest and a person in the confessional have more right to confidentiality in their relationship than a Baptist Minister does with one of his congregation! I asked how. He responded that the pope has ordained the priest I would have hoped the pope ordained the priest as a representative of God. I see nothing different in these relationships from the standpoint of confidentiality.

I also believe that people like myself who counsel and are surrogates for the pastor and fill the pastoral role would function in the same manner. However I believe that no person should be able to expect confidentiality if they shared with the priest, minister, counselor, lawyer, doctor, plans to for example, kill someone or abuse a child. We sign an agreement of confidentiality with people we minister to that specifically exempts those situations from the confidentiality. If we learn that child abuse, for example, is occurring we are bound by law to report it and we are not bound by the confidentiality of the counseling room. I could at times have some heartburn with reporting a particular situation but one thing is clear. If the abuse is ongoing or likely to continue, I MUST report it, legally and to satisfy my conscience.

A person can refuse to sign the agreement and I will not participate in the program with them. On the other hand the Catholic Church maintains the confidentiality to a degree that violates the law, sensibility and reason. And we have proof that they do because priests who have abused have gone to confession and their activities have been known.

The settlement is for 112 million dollars! As deplorable as is the situation, I for one think this is ridiculous. I am fed up with bloated punitive damage awards. What this bloated settlement has insured is simply this. Others who have been harmed will not be compensated because THERE WILL NOT BE ANY MONEY. I believe the person harmed has a right to be compensated but settlements like this – which result in payments of tens of millions of dollars to layers are totally out of line. I believe a workman is worthy of his hire and that includes tort lawyers.

If the law firm could present an accounting that shows that their fee (about $38 million) is not more than three times the actual cost of the litigation, in this case their costs would have to be over $12 million, I would not question it. Contingent fee lawyers have to get good settlements on cases they in to stay in business. But tort roulette is just plain wrong. I have no idea what the jury was thinking. I hope this will be reduced to a more reasonable amount on appeal.

There is evidence that some of these cases of clergy abuse were brought to the civil authorities and they failed to carry out their duties for some reason. I am not familiar with the details of this one so this may not be the case. But let me cover that here. If it was there should be an investigation into how this failure was engineered. If it was just plain incompetence, that should be dealt with. On the other hand, if the charges were bought off by action of someone who interceded improperly with the authorities, that person and the civil authority who failed to carry out their duty should be held accountable. There are penalties for interfering with prosecution and malfeasance in office.

Finally, the practice of hiding the events and moving the priest to another parish is despicable. I have seen this done in Protestant circles in another way, the person was allowed to find a position with another church and nobody was advised there was a problem. After wreaking havoc in two churches the person is now in private industry. If the purpose was to salvage and rehabilitate the person more safeguards should have been put in place.

The full text is at

yahoo.com.