A Missouri court this week convicted Bishop Robert Finn of failing to report suspicion of child abuse by a priest in his diocese, a misdemeanor offense. Bishop Finn is now the highest ranking Catholic cleric to be convicted in the sex abuse scandal. Religion Clause has the details here.
The Wider Implications of the Clergy Sex-Abuse Crisis
Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins has written a provocative essay on the wider implications of the clergy sex abuse crisis for American Catholicism. It’s not just that victims have suffered, that clergy have gone to jail, that the Church has paid billions of dollars in lawsuits, that charitable work has been curtailed, and that several dioceses have declared bankruptcy. The scandal has also diminished the Church’s voice on debates about law and religion. Where once people would have paid respect to the Church’s views, even if they disagreed with them, the crisis has so weakened the Church’s moral authority that people dismiss the institution and its arguments entirely. For example, in Jenkins’s view, the ineffectiveness of the Church’s voice has greatly influenced the debate on same-sex marriage:
One great “might have been” involves same-sex marriage. In light of present realities, it is hard to recall just how fringe and even bizarre an issue this seemed just a decade ago, and a large section of the American public is Read more
Catholic Priest Receives 3-6 Years For Child Endangerment
A Pennsylvania judge today sentenced Monsignor William Lynn, a former official of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, to a term of three to six years for the crime of felony child endangerment. A jury convicted Lynn last month in connection with his oversight of now-defrocked priest Edward Avery, who is serving a prison term for the sexual assault of an altar boy in 1999. Rather than reveal what he knew about allegations against the priest, the sentencing judge said, Lynn had chosen to obey his bishop and remain silent. Lynn is the first American priest to be convicted in connection with the covering up of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. His lawyers plan an appeal. The AP has the story here.
Careers in Canon Law?
A thousand years ago, Catholic canon-law courts had an active docket and an extensive jurisdiction that covered contracts, property, torts, and much else. Over centuries, in a process Harold Berman famously described in Law and Revolution, the docket dwindled and the jurisdiction contracted. As a result of secularization, church courts lost most of their jurisdiction and importance in Catholic life. Nowadays, canon-law courts are reserved principally for marriage annulments.
According to an AP story this week, though, things may be starting to change, at least in the United States. The AP reports on a significant recent rise in litigation before church courts. Some litigation involves priests accused of sex abuse, but much concerns everyday matters like parish closings, use of church property, even complaints about non-liturgical music. More and more, it seems, Catholics see church courts as the proper place to air their grievances and seek redress. In fact, something of a new practice area seems to be developing. The AP story describes the practice of attorney Michael Ritty from upstate New York, who employs three lawyers in his canon law firm. A small practice, to be sure, but indications are the field is growing. “‘Most of us, when we were training, were preparing for marriage tribunals, marriage annulments,’ said Monsignor Patrick Lagges of Chicago, a canon lawyer for three decades…. ‘Now there’s such a broad range of things. It’s a much broader field.'”
English High Court Rules Catholic Priest Is Diocesan Employee, Raises Possibility of Vicarious Liability for Clergy Sex Abuse
A judge on the High Court of England and Wales ruled this week that a Catholic priest qualified as an employee of his diocese, thus exposing the diocese to vicarious liability for clergy sex abuse. The decision came in a case brought by a woman who claims that a priest abused her when she was a child. Although the priest did not have an employment contract with the diocese, the judge ruled, the diocese trained him, appointed him to his position, and held him out to the public as its representative. It provided “the premises, the pulpit, and the clerical robes” and sent the priest out into the community.
This is apparently the first time a court in the UK has held a priest to be an employee of his diocese. Dioceses usually lack day-to-day supervisory authority over priests; for this reason, courts often hold that priests are not employees, but independent contractors. The plaintiff’s victory may be less valuable than it appears, however. Vicarious liability exists where the employee commits torts while acting within the scope of his employment, and assaulting parishioners obviously falls outside a priest’s job description. The judge gave the diocese extended leave to appeal the decision. – MLM
Loathsome
Readers are no doubt aware of the horrifying charges arising out of the Penn State University incident, in which it is alleged that an assistant coach of the football team molested several boys and that several members in the front office of the football organization did not report the crimes. If the charges are true, they are loathsome indeed.
Loathsome in a different way is this line in today’s New York Times column by Maureen Dowd: “Like the Roman Catholic Church, Penn State is an arrogant institution hiding behind its mystique.” Whatever may be the viability of the charges against Penn State officials under Pennsylvania’s failure to report statute, or against specific clerics in the Roman Catholic Church in positions of power in entirely distinct cases (and they may well be legally viable), the blanket smear of this comment — its suggestion that all cases look alike, or that it is appropriate to indict an entire Church, whatever the facts may look like, for what Dowd perceives as “arrogan[ce]” — is, in my opinion, despicable. — MOD
Hauling the Pope before the International Criminal Court
Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights requested that the International Criminal Court, a tribunal headquartered in The Hague, prosecute the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI, and three cardinals for “crimes against humanity” in connection with the clergy sex-abuse scandal. The complaint alleges that the Vatican tolerated the systematic and widespread rape and torture of children and vulnerable adults throughout the world and that Pope Benedict XVI and three cardinals bear personal responsibility for these crimes as a matter of direct authority and respondeat superior.
There are serious legal problems with CCR’s complaint. First, sexual abuse by clergy does not fit easily within the definition of a “crime against humanity” contained in the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute of 2002. The Rome Statute defines a “crime against humanity” as “a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population,” a definition that suggests something like a wartime atrocity. Second, the Vatican is not a state-party to the Rome Treaty. That’s not necessarily a show-stopper, as the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes Read more