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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFederal Judge: Catholic Church Has A Constitutional Right Not To Compensate Victims Of Sex Abuse
BY IAN MILLHISER ON JULY 31, 2013 AT 2:05 PM
A federal judge in Wisconsin handed down an opinion yesterday granting the Catholic Church and indeed, potentially all religious institutions such sweeping immunity from federal bankruptcy law that it is not clear that it would permit any plaintiff to successfully sue any church in any court. While the ostensible issue in this case is whether over $50 million in church funds are shielded from a bankruptcy proceeding triggered largely by a flood of clerical sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Judge Rudolph Randa reads the churchs constitutional and legal right to religious liberty so broadly as to render religious institutions immune from much of the law.
The case involves approximately $57 million that former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan transferred from the archdioceses general accounts to into a separate trust set up to maintain the churchs cemeteries. Although Dolan, who is now a cardinal, the Archbishop of New York and the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has denied that the purpose of this transfer was to shield the funds from lawsuits, Dolan penned a letter to the Vatican in 2007 where he explained that transferring the funds into the trust would lead to an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.
The issue facing the court is, essentially, whether the funds that Dolan split off into a separate trust can now be reabsorbed into the archdioceses assets in order to enable sex abuse victims and other creditors to be paid out of these assets. In holding that these funds cannot be so absorbed, Randa relies on a law that limits the federal governments ability to substantially burden a persons exercise of religion, Randa cites to the current Archbishop of Milwaukees statement that the care and maintenance of Catholic cemeteries, cemetery property, and the remains of those interred is a fundamental exercise of the Catholic faith, and concludes that this statement alone is enough to shield the churchs funds. As Randa explains, if the Trusts funds are converted into the bankruptcy estate, there will be no funds or, at best, insufficient funds for the perpetual care of the Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries.
And Randa does not stop there. He goes on to argue that senior church officials get to unilaterally decide what constitutes a substantial burden on their faith for purposes of federal law Archbishop Listeckis declaration stands unopposed, and on the issue of religious doctrine, it is unassailable. Moreover, the issue of substantial burden is essentially coterminous with religious doctrine. In this case, an archbishop declared cemetery funds to be untouchable in a bankruptcy proceeding, but Randas reasoning could extend much farther. Nothing in his opinion would prevent a churchs officials from declaring that every single line in every single ledger kept by the church is mandated by the sacred word of God and therefore every single dollar owned by the church is untouchable so long as the church engages in the kind of accounting gymnastics Dolan allegedly performed.
more
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/31/2388461/federal-judge-catholic-church-has-a-constitutional-right-not-to-compensate-victims-of-sex-abuse/
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Will Islamist extremists be able to rape little boys with impunity? Or just Catholics?
Zoeisright
(8,339 posts)What a bunch of fucking bullshit. Apparently the only way for these victims to get any justice is now violence.