MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation
02/04/2015
Jennifer Haselberger
Obviously, I want to see the victims of sexual abuse by clergy adequately compensated for the harm that was done to them. And, I want to see this compensation provided sooner rather than later. Recent bankruptcy proceedings involving Catholic dioceses suggest that the easiest way for this to happen is by the insurance companies agreeing to ‘pony up’ big money to provide monetary compensation to victims and other creditors. However, when the news broke in November of 2014 that the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis was suing its insurers for refusing to pay on abuse claims, my sympathies went immediately to the insurers.
After all, most if not all of the companies involved in the Archdiocese’s suit are publicly held, and therefore they have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders. And, in many cases there is truth to their argument that the abuse that resulted in these claims was not an ‘accident’ or ‘occurrence’ but an expected event that, if unintended, the Archdiocese should have been able to foresee and prevent. Moreover, in my experience the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis continued to reassign clergy guilty of misconduct even after receiving notice from its insurers that there would no coverage of the individual going forward.
Take, for instance, the case of Father Stanley Maslowski. In 1991, Father Maslowski served time for the theft of nearly $200,000 during a three year period from the parish at which he had been assigned, Saint Thomas of Corcoran. At the time that he was assigned to the parish the Archdiocese was aware that Father Maslowski had a serious sex addiction, and thought it likely he had embezzled from Saint Pius in White Bear Lake. Nonetheless, they were apparently taken by surprise by the more recent theft, which went to fund sex binges that by Maslowski’s own admission often cost up to $1000 a week. In Corcoran. In the 1980s.
Barely more than two years after his release from the workhouse, Father Maslowski was back in ministry in this Archdiocese (on the condition that he end his friendship with the notorious madam Rebecca Rand), despite the fact that the Archdiocese had received notice from Catholic Mutual- Catholic Mutual!!!!- that they would not provide insurance coverage for him if he was reinstated. And, despite serious concerns about his ongoing behavior, he remained in ministry until the summer of 2013, when he was removed due to ‘a change in the church’s political climate’.
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