NO DOUBT $760 million buys a lot of dry-cleaning. But no sum, however vast, can clean the stain of clerical priestly abuse from the Catholic Church.Even as the Los Angeles archdiocese agrees to the church's largest payout — $US660 million ($A763 million) to 508 victims — the suspicion remains that the church was dragged there because it feared the alternative was worse.
A court case was due to begin yesterday that might have sparked a chain of events more expensive still.
That the abuse happened is bad enough — especially by people in a position of trust and charged with pastoral care — but most of us would not be amazed to find the odd rotten apple in such a large barrel as the several hundred thousand Catholic priests around the world.
What is truly appalling is the way the church hierarchy connived and concealed and covered up, apparently much more concerned for the perpetrators and the church's own standing than for the victims.
It has taken 500 years for the church to live down the Inquisition (at least to the extent that it has), and the abuse crisis too will take generations.
In 2002 Canberra Bishop Pat Power identified it as the biggest challenge facing the Catholic Church since the 16th century Reformation. He was surely right.
In the US, where the church has now paid more than $2.1 billion in compensation, several dioceses have gone bankrupt. The loss of trust, while less easily measured, is a deeper wound.
Had the church faced up to its responsibilities in a way more consistent with its founder's teachings, the consequences for both the victims and the institution would have been greatly reduced.
As one of the Californian victims, whose average payout will be about $US1.2 million, told CNN, the scars remain. Steven Sanchez, 47, asked: "Whether you give me a cheque for $10 or $10,000, where can I take that cheque and cash it in some place to make me 10 years old again? No amount of money can compensate any of us for what happened."
Sister Angela Ryan, prevention officer for the Australian church's professional standards committee, agrees. "You can never eradicate the past, you can only help people move on in the future," she says.
The situation is different in Australia, not least because we are much less litigious a society, but several dioceses have still paid out large sums for clerical transgressions. What victims everywhere want most of all is to be believed, to be taken seriously.
Next most important is to be certain that the pedophile won't be in a position to abuse anyone else. Compensation usually ranks below both factors and is not always in cash — it may include counselling, a new computer or help starting a business.
So what the victims desired most was what the church worked hardest to deny them.
Instead it moved transgressors, put pressure on the victims and attacked the media and others who sought to bring perpetrators to account.
How could the church so contradict the principles of justice and protection of the oppressed for which it is supposed to stand — and for which indeed it has often fought? No doubt for a variety of mixed motives, above all protecting the institution.
But, according to Angela Ryan, it has only recently understood the nature of abuse — that a pedophile will repeat his behaviour.
Instead, it was thought to be a moral lapse that could be redeemed with an apology and by giving the abuser a fresh start.
Social workers trained in the 1970s were told little or nothing about sexual abuse, and state teachers who offended were also moved, she says.
Of course, it is not solely a Catholic problem — Anglicans have had well-publicised problems in this country — or even a Christian one. Most abusers are fathers, uncles and grandfathers, which also involves a betrayal of trust. But the fact that others are guilty too doesn't diminish the responsibility of the church.
The legacy is going to continue.
The whole church has been damaged, from inside and outside. The abuse crisis has shaken the confidence of many devout Catholics, and given a new weapon to those already hostile.
The vast majority of priests who are serving faithfully feel tarnished by the few, while the term "pedophile priest" has become a catchphrase for some to dismiss all Christianity. That may be unfortunate and unfair, but the church will just have to endure it.
One aspect of the legacy has been beneficial, and that is the rise of lay power in the church. In Boston, the Globe newspaper ran a brilliant investigative series exposing church cover-ups.
Cardinal Bernard Law, who became a byword for the dishonesty and defensiveness that characterised the official response, was forced by the huge reaction from lay Catholics such as the Voice of the Faithful, then by his own clergy, to step down as archbishop and retire to Rome.
As Age journalist Ray Cassin wrote at the time, plenty of bishops have had to resign because of misconduct or incompetence or because they fell out of favour in Rome.
Law resigned because he fell out of favour in Boston. In a manner almost unprecedented in the modern Catholic Church, a bishop had been called to account by those over whom he had authority.
In Australia, the bishops have largely distanced themselves from the sex abuse complaints process in the interests of fairness and transparency.
A more open church is a trend that many Catholics hope can be extended.
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