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Gerald T. Slevin: After Elections, Who Will Prosecute More Predatory Priests? Constitutional Lawyer Obama Or The Three R’s—Romney, Ryan & Ratzinger? And Why Does It Matter?
Another hard-hitting and exhaustively researched essay by the Harvard-trained former Wall Street lawyer Jerry Slevin today. Jerry looks at the two U.S. presidential candidates in light of their records in dealing with issues of child abuse and of church and state, and challenges Catholics to inform our consciences as we select a candidate by thinking carefully about why the Vatican and U.S. bishops appear to be playing very overt partisan politics in this election cycle–to assure that the candidate (Romney) more likely to be lenient to Catholic officials prosecuted for criminal activity with child abuse cases is elected. What follows is Jerry’s essay:
Is Anyone Above American Law For Misdeeds Committed In U.S.?
The U. S. Founders in the American Revolution risked their fortunes and even their lives to establish a basic legal principle, namely, that sovereigns, whether kings, clerics or presidents, must be subject, as all other citizens are, to the rule of law, in particular, under laws that are democratically enacted, transparently applied and impartially enforced. In 1776, European absolute monarchs and clerics were in practice very often “above” the law. This had been a major grievance of many of the Founders, who were wisely and understandably appalled at the unaccountable monarchs and clerics of the Old World. Consequently, the Founders made sure in the U.S. Constitution that no one was to be above the law.
President Nixon with Watergate, and President Clinton with “Monicagate,” learned painfully that the Founders really meant what they said about the supremacy of the rule of law, as these two powerful U.S. Presidents were humiliated in public Constitutional proceedings for their misdeeds. My Harvard Law mentor, Constitutional scholar and Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, made this very clear to Nixon.
Will This Essential Legal Principle Still Apply After the Elections?
Ominously, it now appears that this fundamental legal principle, that all persons, including politically powerful ones, are subject to American law for their U.S. misdeeds, may be seriously at risk following the current U.S. elections, at least as it may relate to the U.S. misdeeds of the pope and his U.S. bishops. Religious liberty for all, under the rule of law, appears to be in danger of becoming clerical privilege for some, depending possibly on whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is elected.
All American voters, but especially Catholics, have to include this serious consideration conscientiously in their voting calculus. Catholics cannot let themselves by manipulated by a cynical Catholic hierarchy that appears to be attempting to exploit election-year wedge issues like contraception and gay marriage to further the Catholic hierarchy’s narrow self-interest and possibly even to protect themselves from possible criminal prosecution.
Barack Obama’s U.S. Justice Department prosecutors recently took very aggressive legal action in a criminal case of a priest child pornographer directly related to the subsequent conviction of the first U.S. Catholic bishop, Bishop Finn of Kansas City, for a child endangerment related crime. Obama also, following the Penn State Sandusky revelations, condemned strongly child sexual abuse, and his Federal prosecutors are actively presently pursuing Penn State cover-up investigations. Obama could have pursued a less aggressive approach to child sexual abuse to accommodate the Catholic hierarchy’s anxieties, but he did the right thing for defenseless children instead.
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