Home To Roost

The abuse victims are flocking around, like chickens coming home to roost. Unless you're looking at it from the bishops' POV, in which case you might feel that Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds has come to pass.

As another diocese declares bankruptcy, we are once again reminded of the utter incompetence of the men in charge. Out in Spokane, Washington, the church is going to sell off its headquarters and other properties, seeking to raise $11 million dollars. Yes, that's an 11 with six zeroes following, and it's all to pay some compensation to the victims of clerical sexual abuse. A lot of money? Yes, and a lot of victims.

In Ireland, the crisis is so far beyond anything seen in the U.S. that it boggles the mind. To this day, the Catholic Church has a powerful influence in the schools, which are publicly funded but religiously guided. Back in the early days of the Republic, and continuing for fifty or sixty years, the church ran homes for delinquents, again with government stipends paid per head. Except that the children were not really delinquent. Sometimes their crime was in being poor. Sometimes the parish priest felt that the parent was negligent, especially if the parent was a widow, and most definitely if the widow took up with another man.

The inquiries and tribunals are still going on, but the government fears that the cost will top out at a few hundred million euro. The various religious orders reached a settlement, trading properties and cash for a government bailout, but what the clerics ponied up is proving to be far, far short of the cost of the damage that they did.

For the church in Spokane, $11 million may not be enough. Parishioners are not willing to blindly donate, not when the church could have put an end to the abuse through sensible oversight practices. Instead, bishops shuttled abusers from one church to another. They did it in Spokane, they did it in Joliet, Illinois, and they did it all over Ireland. Using their absolute power and insisting on the blind obedience of the faithful, those in power played a shell game, rather than admit to some serious deficiencies. The parishioners are no longer blind, and they are not going to follow quietly behind the crozier.

A Christian Brother, testifying before Ireland's Redress Board, had the nerve to claim that many people came forward, declaring that they had been abused, but they were only after some compensation. No facts to cite, just a blanket statement, a lament that would turn the criminal into the victim. Even after all kinds of testimony, they still don't get it. But the faithful do, they understand exactly what was up.

How many millions of dollars will be needed to pay for counseling and compensate for the loss of childhood innocence? By going into bankruptcy, the bishop of Spokane has surrendered control of his assets, an unheard of state of affairs. A day late in recognizing the realities of child abuse, and many millions of dollars short. Funny how Catholics are continuing to fund their local parish, but they won't contribute to the annual diocesan drive. Hello Bishop, can you hear me now?