BishopAccountability.org
 
  Diocese Is Fearful of 'Economic Holocaust'

By Onell R. Soto
Union-Tribune [San Diego CA]
September 9, 2005

A federal judge in San Diego said yesterday he was skeptical that overturning a state law that allowed victims of sexual abuse to sue the Roman Catholic Church is the right thing to do.

"That's an awful broad stroke of the pen," Judge William Q. Hayes said at the end of a three-hour hearing in which church officials asked him to do just that.

The church officials said the accusations were difficult to fight because they date to the 1950s.

About 140 people have sued the church under a 2002 state law that made it possible for them to file decades-old claims. Those cases, and hundreds of others from Southern California, are in mediation in Los Angeles. No trials have been scheduled.

Hayes didn't make a decision on the validity of the law yesterday, or say when he was likely to, but said he wasn't inclined to throw out the cases "without knowing the facts, without knowing how old they are."

A lawyer for the Diocese of San Diego said during the hearing that settling or taking to trial all the lawsuits accusing Roman Catholic priests of sexual abuse would be "an economic Holocaust" on the church.

"It will be one of the largest transfers of wealth . . . that has ever occurred," J. Michael Hennigan told the judge.

It's difficult for the church to fight the cases dating back decades because, in many instances, witnesses have died and documents have been destroyed, Hennigan said.

San Diego Bishop Robert H. Brom attended the hearing, but left quickly without talking to reporters. About 40 others, including people who claim abuse and their supporters, were also in the downtown courtroom.

The federal hearing came in a case filed by an Escondido woman against a religious order in Ohio.

At issue is whether the law allowing the lawsuits against organizations that should have protected children from sexual abuse violates constitutional protections against the government meddling in religious affairs.

The judge frequently brought up a landmark 1993 U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidating a Miami suburb's ordinance banning ritual slaughter of chickens, goats and other animals.

The Supreme Court found the ordinance in Hialeah, Fla., unduly impinged on the Santeria religion.

"Legislators may not devise mechanisms, overt or disguised, designed to persecute or oppress a religion or its practices," it ruled.

Hayes challenged Hennigan to explain how the law affected religious practices for Roman Catholics.

"I agree. There may be a certain economic cost," the judge said. But he wanted more examples.

Hennigan noted that the priests now are more careful when talking about "celibacy issues" to their bishops, who are now supposed to remove from the ministry anybody they believe has sexually abused children.

Financial problems are not quite the burden on religious practices that could make a law unconstitutional, said Marci Hamilton, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. She argued the case on behalf of people who say they were abused.

She and a lawyer for the California Attorney General's Office argued that the law is constitutional and the judge shouldn't invalidate it.

Hennigan countered that the 2002 California law lifting the statue of limitations on civil suits against private organizations whose employees abused children unfairly targeted the Roman Catholic Church.

He said the Legislature passed the law as news of the sexual abuse scandal in the church was reaching a crescendo, and the law specifically excluded counseling as an appropriate response to abuse.

For decades, church officials offered abusive priests psychological counseling, but allowed them to return to work with children. Hennigan said that was an acceptable response at the time, but not anymore.

"Counseling is never going to be used again," he said.

Hamilton said the 2002 law applies to a variety of private institutions, including other religious groups and secular organizations that provide services to children.

"The Legislature says counseling is inadequate to protect children," she said. "It does not say we're going to go after the Roman Catholic Church.