April 4, 2002 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Who should pay for misconduct in a charity? That is the question that the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston faces as it continues to reel under the ever-darkening cloud of sexual misconduct by a significant number of its priests.
After the recent conviction of the archdiocese’s most notorious pedophile, John Geoghan, the archdiocese settled the legal claims of a first group of his victims for an estimated $30-million. More priests have been named and more lawsuits are coming. By the time the legal storm clears, the ultimate cost to Boston’s archdiocese could well be more than $100-million. Finding funds to cover those costs has turned out to be no simple matter.
As the facts related to the sexual abuse of children by priests have trickled out, it is becoming clear that the leadership of the Catholic Church did little to stop that abuse. Priests charged with the sex abuse of children were routinely relocated to other parishes, and matters were hushed up.
Now this approach to the problem of priestly misconduct has caught up with Cardinal Bernard Law, and a growing chorus of critics within Boston and across the nation are calling for his resignation. Given his longstanding knowledge of the trail of abuse and his failure to deal with it decisively, many Catholics have concluded that the cardinal lacks the moral authority to set things right and restore the confidence of his followers.
The controversy has also raised a number of difficult financial problems for the archdiocese. First, contributions at parishes have suffered, and one recent survey found that parishioners were reluctant to give for fear that their local donations might be used to pay for the growing legal costs associated with the scandal, rather than to support the church’s charitable activities. In addition, the archdiocese has been forced to extend a $300-million capital campaign because of an anticipated slowdown in gifts.
But most crucially, Catholic leaders have been faced with the troubling question of just who should pay for the damage caused by the church’s priests. The Boston archdiocese has discussed the idea of selling real estate and other assets to pay for the settlements that the archdiocese will have to offer the alleged victims, estimated at more than 200 people said to have been abused by 10 current and dozens of retired or deceased priests.
But the sale of assets is not wholly uncontroversial. After all, any buildings that will be sold were purchased with different charitable purposes in mind. A major sell-off would hardly give contributors to the current capital campaign peace of mind that their contributions will be used for the purposes that they intend.
To date, however, the church has pledged to secure most of the funds it will need to pay for legal costs from a small group of large donors. Who these donors are and how they will be recruited has not been explained.
Of course, the archdiocese is capable of mobilizing large amounts of money, but it has never had to do so for reasons as macabre as the settlement of sex-abuse cases.
At first glance, it becomes difficult to imagine who would give to this cause, especially given the role of the current leadership in keeping the matter secret for years. Yet the archdiocese believes it has supporters with the stomach for this kind of philanthropy.
The situation in Boston will ultimately test the limits of donors’ loyalty — and introduce a unique opportunity for the truly faithful to act.
Two scenarios seem possible. The first involves no change. The archdiocese will mobilize millions of dollars — without preconditions — to pay for the criminal acts of its workers, and it will in effect prove once and for all that secular philanthropy may be about rewarding performance, but religious giving operates under a different set of rules.
The second scenario is far different. In it, major donors will demand and get meaningful policy changes within the church’s administration relating to openness and accountability. Achieving such a deal with the Catholic Church will not be easy, but major donors to the new legal fund have a responsibility not just to their church but also to the secular world to press for it.
In the case of the Boston archdiocese, Cardinal Law is deeply insulated from the pressures that charity executives face when things go wrong. Still, one hopes that the donors who decide to pay for all the abuses that have been committed will do so in the spirit of an enlightened and modern understanding of philanthropy.
Donors willing to bail out the archdiocese need to go beyond charity driven by boundless and unconditional loyalty and should demand change before providing the massive bailout that will be necessary. While such giving may not be common practice in religious circles, the events in Boston demand a rethinking of the philanthropic principles and practices in the world of religion.
The archdiocese in Boston is facing a fateful moment, one that will test its character and capacity for change. If its major donors step forward and play a significant role in pushing for needed change, the church — and all those who depend so much on it — will be better off in the long run.
Peter Frumkin is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, in Washington, and the author of
On Being Nonprofit (Harvard University Press, 2002).
