Is the Church Safe for Children?

Will you trust your children to be alone in a church, a place for worshipping God? Before saying anything in an emphatic affirmation, just dwell on a couple of news items that appeared recently in the press.

“Massive payout for Sex Abuse Victims” screams a headline in today’s Gulf News (page 25, September 9, 2007. This is an agency report from AFP not posted on GN website). At first glance, the headline gives you the impression that it must be a verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal to victims of some conflict zone such as Rwanda, Sierra Leone or Bosnia. It is not! The perpetrator is not any criminal organization or militia! It is the Roman Catholic Church!!!

The church in San Diego, California, will pay nearly $200 million to 144 victims of sexual abuse by its priests! If you are an ordinary “God-fearing” person, this must be shocking news to you – thoroughly devastating, utterly outrageous! See the same news reported by Reuters “San Diego Church makes sex abuse settlement”

The report says that each of the 144 victims will receive $1.4 million each, but does not say how many priests were involved or the priests-to-victims ratio. The church was initially reluctant to pay that much money – their offer was a miserly $95 million but eventually agreed to double it.

A Gulf News report “LA church in record abuse deal” published two months ago, says that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay a settlement of $660 million to 508 victims (or $1.3 million per victim). The report also gives a list of payouts within the last five years that exceeds $1.18 billion! More shocking is the total number of victims – 1700!! This is the data from just six dioceses in the US.

• In 2007, Diocese of Sandiego paid $198 million to 144 victims


• In 2007, Los Angeles Archdiocese paid $660 million to 508 victims


• In 2006, Diocese of Covington, Kentucky paid $84 million to 350 victims


• In 2005, Diocese of Oakland, California paid $56 million to 56 victims


• In 2004, Diocese of Orange, California paid $100 million to 90 victims


• In 2003, Archdiocese of Boston paid $84 million to 552 victims
  

According to Wikipedia there are 195 dioceses in the US. If we take a modest average of 280 victims per diocese, there will be at least 54,600 victims in the US alone. If all of them are awarded a fairly reasonable compensation of $1 million each, the church will have to find $54.6 billion to bail out!

Another headline in today’s Gulf News reads “Pope blasts Europeans for not having enough children” (again an agency report not posted at GN website, but can be read at Yahoo News). It says “Pope Benedict XVI blasted Europeans for being selfish and not having enough children in a sermon yesterday in Austria”.

Thanks to Gulf News, I now have answers to some inconvenient questions:

First is the question “Where are those millions?” posed by skeptics about the millions collected by Mother Teresa. No need to guess where those millions are going or why the church is fast-tracking her sainthood!

The second is the Pope's question - Why do Europeans have less children? Isn’t the answer obvious? Either most of the adult European Catholics are victims of past abuse or know too well their churches and priests.

A third question is why are churches in Britain and elsewhere witnessing dwindling parishioners? With no children to go to churches, priests are also dwindling. There must be two reasons for this - a. Which abused child would want to become a priest? b. With no children to be abused, what is the point of becoming a priest?

So what is the solution? At least in Britain, the churches and parishes are outsourced to India! Please read “Indians help keep the flock in UK churches” published in the Gulf News on September 7, 2007