The controversial topic of whether the Statutes of Limitations on allegations of sexual abuse should be extended gives rise to a lively debate at the 15th annual meeting of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.The church opens itself to charges of hypocrisy when it opposes extending the statute of limitations for bringing clergy sexual abuse claims, according to attorney Charles Molineaux.
He called it an "inversion of episcopal priorities" that places concern for property and the institutional church ahead of concern for souls.
Molineaux, an international commercial arbitrator, addressed a panel on the clergy sexual abuse scandal Oct. 27 at the 15th annual meeting of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists at St. John's University School of Law in Queens.
Molineaux is a graduate of the law school.
The Oct. 26-27 meeting drew some 450 registrants and featured more than 70 panels with 200 speakers.
Among the speakers were Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver; William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights; Stephen Krason of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, who is the society's president; and Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things.
A statute of limitations is a pragmatic, legislative device to preclude stale claims, said Molineaux. Such statutes limit the length of time in which a suit must be begun before the right to sue is lost.
"The usual rationale is that old claims are hard to defend against because of the passage of time, the fading of memories, the disappearance of witnesses and the loss of records," he said.
"This argument ignores the reality that the burden of proof is on the plaintiff in any event and that ... it is usually easier to defend than to attack."
In several states, legislatures have proposed revising or eliminating the statute of limitations for civil suits in child sex abuse cases, including Colorado.
In a May 2006 article in the journal First Things, Archbishop Chaput wrote that such efforts are prejudicial to the Catholic Church and harmful to the cause of justice.
The archbishop wrote that plaintiffs' attorneys and victims' groups in several states "often work together" to pressure lawmakers to relax the statute of limitations so that old cases can be reopened and new suits demanding huge damages can be filed.
In his speech, Molineaux said there are recognized exceptions for suspending or extending the fixed time in which to bring a lawsuit for an injury, he said.
These include delayed discovery of the injury or the minor age or mental incompetence of the person potentially bringing the claim.
Molineaux mentioned repressed memory of sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder as relatively recent arguments for extending the statute of limitation.
"Initially, many loyal Catholics were appropriately skeptical in reaction to what seemed yet more psychobabble to prop up lately appreciated actionable facts," he said.
"But there have just been too many verifiable cases which have emerged in different states and dioceses to ignore this development."
If the mission of the church is to lead people to Christ, the institutional church should be more than merely apologetic toward victims of errant churchmen, said Molineaux.
Quoting the Second Vatican Council document "Gaudium et Spes," the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, he said: "The order of things must be subordinate to the order of persons and not the other way around, as the Lord suggested when he said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath."
Molineaux said that the "crisis has always had two distinct aspects: abuse and cover-up. The abuse aspect involved a tiny percentage of priests; the cover-up aspect involved a majority of bishops. The overriding policy of the cover-up bishops -- some behaving criminally -- was the protection of the institutional church, its physical assets and the careers of its churchmen."
"The institutional church has only acted in response to the legal compulsion of the secular courts and/or in response to media pressure and public outrage," he said. He urged the church to cease its opposition to extending statute of limitations.
"Protecting the fiscal and physical assets of the institutional church from justice, via outmoded and arbitrary statutes of limitation, is not a consideration when it clashes with the mission of the church -- the bringing of men to Christ, by word and example," he concluded.
"The institutional church should not dodge moral responsibility by invoking pragmatic rules as to the timing of lawsuits or by stalling with secrecy the production of record evidence," he added.
In a response to Molineaux, Krason said, "If you eliminate statute of limitation protection, you will feed the frenzy of prosecutors."
"Where there is smoke, there is not necessarily fire," he added. John Kipley, of National Family Planning International, said that blame for the sexual abuse crisis should be spread among the individuals who committed the abuse and the society that tolerated unchaste sexual practices.
"After Vatican II, there was a horrible misinterpretation that the church had to accommodate itself to the culture, instead of permeating it," he said. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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