Almost a year and a half ago, I blogged that the diocese of Norwich in my home state of Connecticut had released a list of known-abusing priests. Since then the diocese has contended with lawsuits over pedophilic priests. It appears that hasn’t gone too well for them. As the Norwich (CT) Bulletin reports, the diocese has decided to declare bankruptcy over the matter (Archive.Is cached article):
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich on Thursday filed for bankruptcy reorganization as part of its efforts to resolve several pending abuse lawsuits initiated by individuals who allege they were sexually assaulted by at least two overseers of a former Deep River boarding school during the 1990s.
In a letter posted on the diocese’s website, the Most Rev. Michael Cote, bishop of Norwich, said the Chapter 11 filing, though the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford, was the “most equitable way” to deal with the dozens of lawsuits filed alleging abuse at The Academy at Mount Saint John.…
Cote said nearly 60 former residents have filed suit for damages “that exceed the Diocese’s current financial ability to pay.”
The diocese contends they did this as a favor to the plaintiffs:
“A Chapter 11 bankruptcy will allow the Court to centralize these lawsuits, as well as help the Diocese manage its litigation expenses and preserve adequate financial resources for all essential ministries,” Cote said in his letter. “If the Diocese had not filed for bankruptcy, it would be unable to ensure that all of the individuals who file claims are treated fairly and have equal access to the funds available.”
That, of course, is not true. Bankruptcy does little except give the diocese a chance to realign its finances and protect most of its assets from seizure by plaintiffs. That’s what bankruptcy is intended to do — i.e. staunch the financial bleeding and allow an entity to survive.
Like most Catholic dioceses and orders, the Norwich diocese may be cash-poor (living as it does on the cashflow of weekly offerings in churches) but it’s asset-rich, mostly in terms of real estate. If it were to liquidate some of that real estate (e.g. churches and schools it once operated that have been shuttered) I have no doubt the diocese would be able to raise funds that could be paid to plaintiffs. There’s no question they could do so.
But that’s not what they want to do here. They’re trying to shield some of those assets. Plaintiffs won’t be able to seize them, and the diocese won’t likely be forced to liquidate them. The diocese will be able to keep doing what it does, without having to really change anything. And plaintiffs will end up with pennies on the dollar compared with what they ought to get as compensation for the abuse they suffered.
The Norwich diocese certainly isn’t the first Catholic entity to use bankruptcy to squeeze out from under its obligations to make things right with those its personnel have wronged. Since the start of the 2000s, it’s been commonly employed by dioceses and orders around the world as a defense against accountability. And they’ve largely gotten away with it — mostly because that’s what bankruptcy is intended to do, for whoever or whatever makes use of it as a legal tactic.
It’s strange, though, for a supposedly moral and ethical entity such as a Roman Catholic diocese to use clever legal tactics in an effort to keep from being held fully accountable for what it did. At least, it seems strange to me. But hey, what could I — cold-hearted, cynical, godless agnostic heathen that I am — possibly know about such immensely sacred things? Right?
Then again, consider that the Roman Catholic Church has long been morally, ethically, and intellectually bankrupt for centuries now. All that will happen is that one of its little principalities will also end up legally and financially bankrupt. Not much of a difference, is there?
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.
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