UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Vinnie Rotondaro | Nov. 2, 2015
Think of a map of Catholic America pockmarked with the equivalent of radiation zones, areas where the previously unseen consequences of the sex abuse crisis are beginning to become apparent.
The fallout? Thousands of Catholic abuse scandals in parish communities across the U.S. leading to direct, localized disaffiliation from the church, in turn precipitating substantial decline in charitable giving, affecting not only Catholic-run social service operations, but all social service operations in the scandalized communities.
This is the alarming new finding of an academic paper titled “Losing My Religion: The Effects of Religious Scandals on Religious Participation and Charitable Giving,” published in the September issue of the Journal of Public Economics.
Written by two Chilean-born economists, Nicolas L. Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Truglia, the paper identifies more than 3,000 scandal events throughout the United States from 1980 to 2010 and tracks how the scandals have affected religious affiliation and charitable giving.
It confirms a widely held belief among many social scientists that a causal relationship exists between religious affiliation and charitable giving. Indeed, the paper states that the “decline in charitable giving is an order of magnitude larger than the direct costs of the scandals to the Catholic churches (e.g., lawsuits).”
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