Is a sued Catholic Priest. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles apologized and "confirmed that it would pay $660 million to settle their lawsuits against it."
Wow. That is truly an insanely large number. The story on the NY Times goes into pretty good detail. It is an interesting case, one involving over 500 victims and a multitude of priests. "Archdiocese officials have said the settlement would require the sale of church property", which is probably one of my favorite pieces of information in this case.
Though, as happy as I am to see this particular archdiocese get bitch-slapped by their victims, I do not believe that it is enough. It is stated in the settlement that the archdiocese will have to make public any files that would allow the full truth to be disclosed. However, this is not likely to happen. Yes, the church is fucked monetarily. Yes, they certainly look terrible in the public eye. However, I sincerely doubt that any of these files will actually be released to the public. As it stands, there is already precedent in other abuse settlements by the church that the files do not belong to the archdiocese, but to the individual priests themselves. That being said, any priest with a less than shitty lawyer can keep their files from ever being made public.
The saddest part about this entire scenario is that the victims have allowed this case to become nothing more than a grab for money. It is stated that the church settled in part because they felt that they would lose the case, and even more money could be at stake. So why take the money now? The answer, it seems, is that the money is available immediately. Right now. No waiting for a trial, no waiting for an appeal. Right now, the victims get to have fat wallets and full bellies. Of that, I say that the victims deserve nothing.
That's right, I said it. The victims, the 500 or so people involved, deserve nothing. Not like this. Not with what could have been accomplished.
Cardinal Mahoney apologized today, and I don't believe a word of it. "Once again, I apologize to anyone who has been offended, who has been abused. It should not have happened, and it will not happen again." He may be completely sincere with what he said. Hell, he may believe it himself, but I declare this man completely naive, completely unaware, and unable to better the church.
There could have been so much accomplished by allowing this to go to trial. So many priests would have been brought into the limelight and burned by the fiery public eye. Yet this will not happen. The testimony in this case could have truly changed the attitude of the Catholic Church, yet we shall never know.
I am glad that the victims in this case set a new benchmark for abuse settlements, however they owe more to anyone else ever abused by a priest to share their stories on the stand.
Though it is nice to see: "Five dioceses have filed for bankruptcy protection: San Diego; Davenport, Iowa; Portland, Ore.; Spokane, Wash.; and Tucson."
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