No better way to apologize than issuing $660M in settlement funds (link), right? I believe that the priest-sex-abuse and ensuing cover-up deserve punishment for the offenders, but I have a difficult time reconciling that with punishing the members of the Diocese overall. The offending priests and whomever assisted with the cover-up have done more damage to the church than the billion(s) of dollars it will pay out will do though.
I’m not a Catholic and find the idea of celibacy in the priesthood to be generally absurd, neither am I a theologian, but celibacy doesn’t seem to work very well for men of the cloth. Women seem to have an absurd tolerance for non-sexual outcome-based behavior, so maybe women of faith can be celibate. I don’t think money can fix the problems caused by the offending priests, so my prayers and hopes are with the victims that they may find peace.
Maybe this is a little-conspiracy-minded, but I believe that these lawsuits are paybacks for the result of the 2004 Presidential election, where based on abortion, many priests advised their congregations to vote pro-life hence pro-Bush. And if you don’t think that the typically extortionist-secular-statist left had something to do with the idea of lifting the statute of limitations for civil action, you fall somewhere far short of reality. Why else would it start out as a test case in liberal bastion-states and move elsewhere?
The most important thing here is that the hardworking trial lawyers of America get their slice of the accumulated wealth of the Catholic Church, which they most certainly will. And they’ll pay back their patron legislators who opened the floodgates with campaign donations. So, the funds of the Catholic Church will flow through the pockets of trial lawyers and some will trickle down into the campaign coffers of secular candidates.