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…