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	Doing Penance Economist July 19, 2007 http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9516068 Los Angeles (CA) — The pain of the sex-abuse scandal may be helping the church AMONG Catholic commentators it has become known as the "long Lent". In 2002 the Boston Globe revealed that priests who were suspected of sexually abusing children had been quietly reassigned to other parishes, where they continued to prey upon the young. Since then revelations of clerical cover-ups have multiplied, together with lawsuits. This week the church performed its biggest act of penance yet, paying $660m to settle claims of sexual abuse by more than 500 people in the archdiocese of Los Angeles. The large sum partly reflects Los Angeles's size and wealth, but it is mostly the result of a change in the law. In 2003 California temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on civil claims, unleashing a flood of accusations dating back to the 1960s and 1970s. Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has said that the church can meet its share of the settlement—some $250m—largely by selling buildings. The rest will be met by insurers and religious orders. But poorer, less well-insured dioceses are in a fix. Facing a costly and embarrassing court battle, the diocese of San Diego went bankrupt earlier this year. All this has caused enormous pain to the church, not to mention its victims, many of whom are angry that their cases are not being heard in court. And the long Lent is far from over. Other states are mulling laws like California's, and new avenues for litigation are opening—churches may be prosecuted for destroying documents, for example. Yet the fallout from the scandal has not damaged the church as much as the gloomiest prophets foretold. In some ways it has even improved it. Surprisingly, there has been no exodus from the church. According to Gallup, a pollster, the proportion of Americans who say they are Catholic has held steady at about a quarter for more than a decade. The faithful have not stopped going to Mass—or, at least, the drift away from the pews that began in the 1950s has not accelerated. And the collection plates still rattle. Research by Georgetown University (formally a Jesuit outfit) shows that although giving to diocesan fundraising campaigns dropped sharply after 2002, donations to local parishes did not. One reason is that Catholic fury has found an outlet in a growing number of lay pressure groups. Voice of the Faithful, which was formed in 2002 and now claims 35,000 members, wants parishioners to have more control over church affairs, although not over doctrine. Another new group led by a former chairman of JPMorgan Chase has nudged the church to become more open about its finances and shrewder in its investments. Such pressure is squeezing concessions from the church. The archdiocese of Boston, where the scandal began, now releases detailed annual accounts and is trying to persuade parishes to follow suit. Earlier this year, in an important gesture, the archbishop of San Francisco turned up at a lay convocation. Gradually, and with little help from Rome, the American church is becoming better attuned to a flock that has become less deferential and less inclined to take things on trust. It needs to change, because the church has big problems, most of which existed before 2002 and have nothing to do with sex abuse. Although much healthier than in Europe, it is not growing as quickly as it should be given the scale of Catholic immigration. Latinos, who comprise about one-third of the church, have long been deserting it for evangelicalism, as the many storefront outfits in Hispanic neighbourhoods testify. Most seriously, it is failing to recruit enough priests. Just 475 will be ordained this year, half as many as 40 years ago. The church can no more afford to ignore the scarcity of priests than it can hide evidence of their bad behaviour.
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