Shield the Flock, Not the Wolf

A few weeks ago, the Los Angeles and Orange County dioceses of the Catholic Church paid $5.2 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that a priest had molested a teenage boy.

Msgr. Michael A. Harris, the defendant who publicly maintains his innocence, was no ordinary priest. He was one of the leading Roman Catholic educators in the United States. I met him in 1978 when I entered Mater Dei High School. Harris was the principal of Mater Dei. He was friendly and charismatic, well-liked by students and revered by parents.

We know that Harris’ cheerful personality and distinguished reputation masked a dark secret that he and the church hid for years. Like most Catholics, I am extremely distressed by what seems to be an endless stream of these types of cases. As co-counsel to the victim in this case, I am outraged by the tactics employed by the church in an attempt to hide the truth from their parishioners and the public.

The pattern is simple. Many bishops in dioceses throughout the United States learn about these cases and try to hide them and protect the perpetrator through the various means available to the church. Perpetrators are routinely sent to “treatment� at church-run psychiatric facilities. They are then brought back into the ministry, typically in different parishes. Recently, the Diocese of Orange removed a parish priest in Dana Point and sent him to counseling. In such instances, the only proper response is removal from the priesthood. When sued, the U.S. bishops act more like the tobacco industry than like the successors to the apostles that they are supposed to be. A recent lawsuit against Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston charges that he failed to properly supervise a priest charged with child molestation. The church responded by blaming the victim.

Court documents filed by the church alleged that the victim’s “negligence� contributed to the molestation. They ignored the fact that under Massachusetts law a child under 16 cannot consent to a sexual encounter. This blame-the-victim strategy has been repeatedly used by the church throughout the country.

Sometimes the church resorts to even more extreme methods. In a 1999 suit against the Archdiocese of Portland, the church countersued the victim. The strategy backfired. Twenty-five other alleged victims stepped forward, and the church settled all 25 suits. Responsibility for ending this intolerable pattern of abuse, cover-ups and further abuse lies directly at the feet of the U.S. bishops.

Bishops are, in effect, the CEOs of their dioceses and are responsible for dealing with misconduct by clergy under their charge. Unlike corporate CEOs, bishops have far-reaching powers akin to those of a military commander. They have the ability to order priests to undergo psychiatric treatment, send them into seclusion in a remote monastery or even to expel them from the church.

The leading national bishops organization, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, has failed to adopt or implement the reforms necessary to protect children from sexual predators wearing clerical collars. It is time for the Catholic faithful to demand accountability and action from their bishops.

In most other organizations, be they civil, religious or military, when scandals of this sort erupt the leaders of the organizations are held responsible and resign or are relieved, even if they are not directly at fault. Catholics must demand the same level of accountability from their bishops and protest publicly if the bishops do not comply.

There is great peril to the church in ignoring these demands by parishioners. Ignoring sexual abuse hurts the church and taints many good priests with the stain of child molestation. Civil lawsuits will soon give way to aggressive criminal prosecutions if the church does not undertake reform. This is already happening abroad.

Our country may not be far behind. Sexual misconduct in the church has become a serious problem. It affects the credibility of the church’s teachings, it affects the credibility of the church on moral issues and, most of all, it affects individual Catholics and their beliefs.

The only way the church can deal with this issue is to stop denying it, admit fault, minister to victims and expel perpetrators from the clergy.