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	Doe V Holy See One of Several Problems for the Catholic Church By Michael Streich Suite 101 July 6, 2010 http://news.suite101.com/article.cfm/doe-v-holy-see-one-of-several-problems-for-the-catholic-church-a258056 The Catholic Church is facing numerous challenges by civil authorities including U.S. litigation, financial impropriety in Germany, and an EU court ruling. The current turmoil of the Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy stems from a post-modern laity in Europe and the United States as well as continued fallout from the sex abuse scandals. Added to this, investigators and prosecutors in Germany are looking into numerous cases of embezzlement by members of the clergy with one priest suspected of having embezzled 1.5 million Euros. Then, on June 28, 2010, the United States Supreme Court, in the case Doe v Holy See, refused to accept an Oregon case that, in part, stipulates that clerics are employees of the Vatican. Are Priests and Bishops Employees of the Vatican? By sending the Doe v Holy See case back to the lower courts, attorneys arguing on behalf of a sex abuse case will have to prove that that the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) provisions do not apply in this particular tort action. The Obama administration, however, filed a separate brief with the high court supporting the Vatican's claim of immunity. At issue is whether the Vatican, as a sovereign state, has immunity or whether it can be forced to surrender documents and subject members of the hierarchy to be deposed by U.S. attorneys. According to John L. Allen (National Catholic Reporter, May 24, 2010), the "tort exception" in FSIA, "holds that a [foreign] government can be sued for harms caused by its employees and agents in the course of performing duties within the scope of their employment." Attorneys for the Vatican, led by Jeffrey Lena, dispute this, claiming that the abuser, Rev. Andrew Ronan, was not an employee of the Vatican and neither were the bishops that moved him from one diocese to another, an odyssey that began in the Archdiocese of Armagh in Ireland. On-Going Scandals in Europe During the last week in June, Belgian police raided the homes and offices of bishops and other clerics related to sex abuse investigations. The raids included drilling into the tombs of prelates in hopes of finding hidden documents. In Germany, a Spiegel report on "The Hidden Wealth of the Catholic Church" (June 14, 2010) profiled a Church operating under stark contradictions. The poor and working class are asked to give to keep Church programs alive, yet the German Church has amassed billions of Euros in assets. According to the article, "Of Germany's 27 Catholic dioceses, 25 refused to provide information…" Spiegel notes that, "The church likes to point out how much it does for the poor and the weak…Nevertheless, the government foots the bill for many of these activities." German Caritas, according to the article, has an annual budget of 45 billion Euros, the bulk paid by the government. Response of the Vatican Pope Benedict XVI's response has been to replace top members of the Curia with conservatives – theologians that seek to re-evangelize both Europe and the U.S. church according to pre-Vatican Council II standards. The Church rejects post-modernity, equating it, as Pope Benedict XVI has frequent stated, with moral relativity. John Allen, writing in a July 2, 2010 National Catholic Reporter article, states that, "the police raids in Belgium, the refusal by the Supreme Court in the United States to block a sex abuse lawsuit…and the European Court of Human Rights challenge to display of Catholic symbols in Italy all suggest that final pillars of deference by civil authorities to the Catholic church are crumbling." Defenders of the Catholic Church The Vatican hierarchy claims that the media hypes church scandals, such as when Cardinal Levada (March 26, 2010) referred to Maureen Dowd's New York Times editorial as "silly parroting…" Others point out that the Catholic Church has a long history of resiliency. It survived periods of corruption in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance Borgia popes, the pontificate of Julius II, the post-Reformation wars of religion, and the modern move toward a secular society. The extent of this secularization will be gauged when Pope Benedict XVI travels to England in September 2010, one of Europe's least church-attending nations. Additionally, the pope's newly created Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization," headed by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, will have to restore confidence in an institution under fire.
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