A New Wave of Lawsuits is Coming Against Catholics


Whenever the Catholic Church thinks its nightmare of sexual lawsuits is ending another Pandora's Box opens. A new one in opening. Over a dozen states have opened up the window of time when victims can file lawsuits against churches for sexual abuse. The one with the most cases coming at it is, ironically, the one with the deepest pockets for paying off victims.

The Catholic Church says repeatedly it has sexual abuse under control and the future will not yield these long term horrific cases. I have my doubts.

These doubts come from subscribing to the Freedom From Religion Foundation and receiving every other month its publication, Freethought. Each new issue has a large section called, "Black Collar Crime."  Subscribers send to Freethoght items from local newspapers about clergy crime that happen in their state or country. Some of these are allegations being investigated and others convictions and sentencing.

I watch for sexual crimes alleged to have taken place during the last eight years. I'm not sure about this but it seems to me there was a claim by the Pope perhaps a decade ago that measures had been taken to ensure sex crimes by Catholic clergy have been eliminated. In the current issue of Freethought there are eight new charges against Catholic clergy. This is about average. Some occurred within the last two years others went back to 2013. I left out the huge ongoing lawsuits of crimes committed 20 plus years ago. Missing too are cases I read about in my Iowa and North Dakota papers but do not appear in Freethought.

 I accept that sex crimes committed by Catholic Clergy are no more frequent than happens in other professions. It is the Catholic Church which claims, however, its clergy are of some superior rank among clergy because their heritage goes back to Peter in the Bible.

The number of news sexual crimes among Catholic clergy show no signs of slowing. The church should simply admit it clergy are just average men who have chosen to make their living as employees of the church. There should also be an admission these clergy have no better pipeline to God than the average person and they have the same weaknesses as well.

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