Zenit reports: Archbishop Chaput speaks out on Statutes of Limitation

Archbishop Chaput has been fighting an important fight.

You can read his full article published in First Things (entitled "Suing the Church") right here, or you can read the Zenit summary below:

NEW YORK, APRIL 23, 2006 (Zenit.org) - A legislative movement to allow the filing of decades-old sexual-abuse claims could devastate the resources of the Catholic Church in the United States, warns an archbishop.

Archbishop Charles Chaput, writing in the May edition of First Things magazine, points to the efforts being made in more than a dozen state legislatures to remove statutes of limitation on old claims of clerical sex abuse.

The Denver prelate warns that amending the civil statutes could "decimate the remaining resources of the Catholic faithful in the United States and steal the religious future from a generation of Catholic young people."

Archbishop Chaput notes that statutes of limitation exist for good reason: to protect justice through the timely and fair resolution of claims.

However, as sex abuse claims have steadily declined since the early 1990s, plaintiffs' lawyers are trying to open up new avenues for suing the Church, a lucrative target.

Allying themselves with victims' groups, these attorneys are working with legislators to create loopholes in the statutes and apply them retroactively to sex abuse claims, some more than 70 years old.

Media pressure

According to Archbishop Chaput, savvy media campaigns sensitize the public in a target area, which puts pressure on lawmakers "to provide 'justice' for those victims whose claims have expired due to statutes of limitation."

The 61-year-old prelate argues that it is questionable whether singling out the Church and other private institutions for "retroactive liability" really serves justice, especially since public schools that record high instances of abuse are largely immune from lawsuits.

"Catholics," notes Archbishop Chaput, "can live with hard laws if they serve the common good." But those laws, he says, must apply equally to "all offending persons and institutions."

"Justice is a right balance of competing legitimate rights and obligations; it is not a form of auctioneering."

He adds: "Communities of faith have an obligation to generously help people who have been hurt by their members, past or present. But they also have a right to maintain their mission of serving others and to be protected from predatory judgments designed to gut their resources and identity.

"Revenge is not justice, no matter how piously one argues it."

So far, Archbishop Chaput has been successful in his attempts to uphold the statutes of limitation:

Denver, May. 05, 2006 (CNA) - The Catholic Church in Colorado scored a hard-fought victory yesterday as the state House of Representatives rejected a bill which many call “blatantly anti-Catholic” in its effort to create an open season on lawsuits against the Church over sexual abuse cases in which the perpetrator may have died decades ago.

House Bill 1090 has received a barrage of criticism, being called anti-Catholic and being accused of placing unjust burdens on the Church which do not exist on secular institutions like public schools.

The bill, sponsored by senate president Joan Fitz-Gerald, passed the state senate last week, but could not maintain its steam with sufficient votes in the House.

...

A major sticking point, say many Catholics, is that the bill is aimed only at religious and private institutions--like the Church--while leaving public entities all but immune.

[More]

Hopefully the line will hold.

[photo: AP Photo/Ed Andrieski]