Bankruptcy courts and mediated agreements are venues of cold calculation designed to bring a measure of justice in the form of financial settlements, a term seductively suggestive of conclusion. When employed as a tactic in the Catholic Church’s ongoing sexual abuse scandal, however, it is clear that such settlements leave the faithful with far more questions than answers.
The legal processes accomplish what they are designed to do, exact a bit of retribution on behalf of victims. They do not, however, restore or transform survivors. They don’t erase haunting, debilitating memories. And they do little to address the most searing questions for which the faithful still await an answer: How did this happen? How could the chief shepherds allow the most vulnerable in the flock to be preyed upon?
As Charles Nadeau, a court-appointed representative of survivors, explained: “Bankruptcy is not inherently unjust. It exists to ensure some measure of fairness when resources are limited. But when applied to clergy sexual abuse, it risks becoming something else — a substitute for moral accountability.”
The San Francisco Archdiocese, faced with a $359 million settlement to hundreds of victims of sexual abuse by clergy, explained that its distribution of financial pain among its parishes was essential to “enabling our local church to emerge from bankruptcy and move beyond this difficult chapter in our history.”
The wish to “move beyond this difficult chapter,” entirely dependent on heavily taxing those who had nothing to do with creating the problem, is a telling sentiment.
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