I've written extensively about the Catholic Church's clergy sex abuse scandal in these pages. As regular readers will know, the way it was mishandled led me to withdraw from that Church's ministry. Today's discussion will discuss the latest development in that scandal. A word of warning: I remain Christian, and will provide a believer's perspective on the issue. If you're not Christian and/or not a person of faith, you might prefer to skip this article.
A report from New York illustrates the core of the Catholic Church's problem, which is with us still, and will be unless and until the hierarchy of the Church returns to its joint and several roots and remakes itself in Christ's image, instead of the world's.
On Tuesday, [the New York State] Appellate court’s First Department reversed a ruling dismissing Chubb insurance’s assertion that its policies did not cover child sexual abuse claims that church leaders enabled and covered up for decades... Chubb insured the Archdiocese of New York, which serves 2.5 million Catholics, and its affiliated parishes and schools between 1956 and 2003.
. . .
The appellate court’s decision affirms Chubb’s position that it shouldn’t have to defend the Archdiocese if the organization “had knowledge of its employees’ conduct or propensities,” the company said in a statement.
“The Archdiocese must now disclose what it knew and when it knew about child abuse perpetrated by priests and employees,” the company contended. “That disclosure is critical to determining whether the [Archdiocese of New York’s] knowledge and cover-up precludes coverage.”
The Archdiocese called the ruling “disappointing” and “wrongly decided,” claiming, “If allowed to stand, the decision will permit insurance companies to evade the contractual obligations of the policies they issued.”
There's more at the link.
The last paragraph cited above illustrates the core of the problem. The Archdiocese of New York is not responding to the news as a body of faith, as the Body of Christ on Earth. It's responding as a business organization, just another corporate entity talking to the courts and other corporate entities on their terms.
This is not what the Church is called to be. It's definitely not Biblical, it's not Godly, and it ignores the calling of Christ for His church to be His bride.
There are those who'll say that of course the Church must respond to corporate issues in a corporate way; that to do otherwise would be nonsensical. However, think about it. Did Christ ever tell His apostles to establish a corporation? Hire lawyers and managers and administrators, and actually use ordained ministers of faith in those occupations, rather than as messengers of the Gospel? What's the priority here?
Bob Mumford, a Pentecostal evangelist, once defined secular humanism as "what you get when the world evangelizes the church". That was a prophetic definition, IMHO, and we see its results in far too many Christian churches today. They are run as businesses rather than houses of faith; secular corporations rather than guardians and beacons and emissaries of Christ's truth. Christ told us to "preach the Gospel to all nations" - not erect corporate entities that would administer the secular possessions of the Church while, effectively, relegating her Divine mission to second place (if that).
That's also what gave rise to the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal in the first place. Seminaries were allowed to become secular in focus, concentrating on psychology, sociology, anthropology and other approaches to human life instead of inculcating the transformational, transcendental calling of Christ to his followers in their students. Worse, the seminaries were staffed by those who shared that perspective, including many who were morally degenerate. Anyone not sharing it was either not appointed to the staff, or removed as quickly as possible. Furthermore, students were selected for the seminary according to their conformity with secular perspectives and liberal/progressive "spirituality", and again, those who did not demonstrate this were quickly removed.
For a thorough discussion of those issues, see the book "Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church" by Michael S. Rose, published in 2002.
The book documents everything that I've said about seminaries, and goes into a lot more detail. It might as well be sub-titled "How Satan Subverted Future Priests", because that was the net effect of such policies on so many students for the priesthood. I suppose we'll never know how many potentially holy, faithful and apostolic priests we lost thanks to those policies. I'm betting it was a bunch, and then some. Even worse, American bishops did nothing to stop this corruption. It was their responsibility under Canon Law: indeed, even when the seminary/ies in question were run by religious orders, and nominally not under local episcopal control, the local bishop could have suspended the sacramental faculties of professors, reported the matter to Rome and demanded action, and taken other steps to ensure orthodoxy of teaching. As far as I'm aware, none did. I would not like to stand in their shoes at their Judgement . . .
(It's with considerable pleasure that I recently read complaints from some liberal and progressive sources that most priests being ordained today are orthodox in their faith and loyal to the traditional spiritual and theological teaching of the Church. I hope they're right. If so, I guess it's the Holy Spirit restoring the church and her clergy to what they should be.)
So, the secular approach to the world epitomized in the Church's seminaries carried over to (and may even have originated in) the Church's administration. Almost every bishop and his deputies (the Vicars General and Chancellors of dioceses, and other positions) were focused on the Church as a business, as a corporate entity, rather than the Church as the living body of believers. They spent their time in meetings, writing memoranda, allowing accountants and lawyers to "help them" to conform the Church's structure and administration to "good business practices" - without considering their real and primary calling. That calling became subordinated to their jobs . . . and that's why things went so appallingly wrong with the Church and some of her clergy.
We see precisely that approach reflected in the Archdiocese of New York's statement after the New York appeal court's ruling:
“If allowed to stand, the decision will permit insurance companies to evade the contractual obligations of the policies they issued.”
Not one word about whether or not the Archdiocese knew about any of the claims over which it's being sued. It did, and we know it did, because that's come out in innumerable reports over the more than two decades that this scandal has been in the public eye. Chubb is absolutely correct to try to avoid the costs of those claims, as the appeals court has just ruled. Its insurance policy/ies contained a liability clause: in so many words, if its clients knew about a potentially harmful or dangerous situation before the incident(s) occurred, and did nothing to prevent or avoid it, their insurance cover was/is forfeited. That's a stock-standard clause in any and every liability insurance policy I've ever read. (I might add that I hold a Master's degree in business, and was a manager and company director before I was ordained a priest, so I know what I'm talking about.)
That's also demonstrated in the public reactions of the Catholic Church in America when the clergy sex abuse scandal broke. They instantly went into a defensive huddle and called in lawyers, psychologists, public relations specialists, and a host of other secular disciplines to help craft a defensive strategy. Few if any bishops publicly accepted responsibility for the catastrophe, and those that did . . . well, let's say I doubt that all of them meant it whole-heartedly. Considering the "inside information" that many priests heard at the time, that was not the impression we gained at all. Indeed, the national programs implemented to "resolve" the issue reflected that insincerity. Not a single one of the measures proposed and enforced did anything to deal with the roots of the problem. Instead, they had the effect of making priests feel that their own bishops considered them to be the source of the problem, and that they were seen as guilty until proven innocent! I've discussed in depth my reactions to the bishops' measures in an earlier article, so I won't repeat them here.
So now we have the Archdiocese of New York protesting because its former insurer is insisting on enforcing the liability clause(s) in its contracts. As far as I'm concerned, the Archdiocese appears to be trying to force Chubb to pay for its debts and liabilities, despite the Church having failed to keep its side of the bargain. To me, that's not only legally wrong, but morally as well. We know the Archdiocese knew more about these scandals than it ever admitted, until it was forced to acknowledge at least some part of that knowledge in previous court proceedings - yet even now, it's trying to avoid acknowledging that reality by simply refusing to talk about it. Honesty? Moral uprightness? Acknowledging sin? Where are those Gospel realities in the arguments of the lawyers for the Archdiocese? Non-existent.
As far as I'm concerned, if the Archdiocese of New York is forced to declare bankruptcy and sell off its physical assets, that might even be a blessing. Perhaps then the Archdiocese and its priests could get back to living and preaching the Gospel, in season and out of season, rather than focusing on banks and lawyers and accountants and insurance policies more than they focus on the mission God has given them.
Peter
