The Wages of Sin Paid by the Innocent

After years of bankruptcy litigation, my diocese has just agreed to a record $330 million payout to victims of sexual abuse by clergy. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles made even that hefty sum look small with an $880 million settlement. In these and many other cases, all of the diocese’s parishes will be forced to contribute to the debt. Which means parishioners will be paying for the sins of their priests.

Not a few Catholics are as angry as our Lord was when He chased the money changers from the temple. Why should the innocent pay from their wages to cover the sins of the guilty?

This conundrum reformulates an old question that cries out with the blood of Abel and continues until today: Why does a good God allow the innocent to suffer?

Sin destroys the innocent far more rapidly than the sinner. The drunk driver kills an ordinary pedestrian. The philanderer tears out his wife’s heart. The sexual abuser shatters his victim physically and emotionally. The effects of sins ripple outward; they impact family, friends, and parishioners – and even people many degrees removed from the sinner.

We do not have ready answers to why this is so. It’s tempting to reject God who seems capricious and unjust as we survey the innocent destroyed by the guilty.

But there is a compelling reason not to turn away from God. He may not be forthcoming with straightforward replies, but He is not a hypocrite. He personally entered our messy human life and suffered unjustly: our sins put Him on a Cross. “For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

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TAKE ACTION: Contact Cardinal Christophe Pierre, papal nuncio to the Unites States, and ask him to launch an official investigation of Cardinal Mahony’s role in the sexual abuse crisis in the Archdiocese of Los Angles. Cardinal Pierre can be reached at 202-333-7121 or at nuntiususa@nuntiususa.org.