|
Posted on 04/18/2002 10:02:09 PM PDT by vance
We should consider prosecuting Catholic Church
By STUART P. GREEN
AS the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church since early this year continues to unfold, and notwithstanding the prospect of an extraordinary meeting next week between Pope John Paul and U.S. cardinals to address the issue, there can be little doubt that a number of Catholic priests around the country soon will face criminal charges and possible jail time. Defrocked Boston priest John J. Geoghan has already been convicted of, and sentenced to prison for, indecent assault and battery for fondling a young boy in 1991. Individual church leaders who knew about their subordinates' conduct, and failed to do anything about it, may also face prosecution. But what about the church itself? Could criminal charges be brought against the church or one of its sub-parts, such as the Archdiocese of Boston, for tolerating and covering up such conduct? And would such prosecutions make any sense?
Criminal liability for corporate and other legal entities has been a fixture of American law at least since 1909, when the Supreme Court held that a New York railroad was not exempt from criminal prosecution simply because it was a legal, rather than flesh and blood, entity. Since then, numerous American business corporations, and even nonprofit associations and municipalities have been successfully prosecuted for various criminal acts committed by their employees.
Federal courts require a finding that an agent of the entity was acting within the scope of his or her authority and on behalf of the entity. The somewhat more restrictive rule that is favored by many state courts says that an entity can be held criminally liable if an act of one of its agents was "authorized, performed or recklessly tolerated by ... a high managerial agent acting in behalf of the [entity] within the scope of employment."
Did "high managerial agents" of the Catholic Church "authorize" or "recklessly tolerate" criminal acts by their agents? Internal church documents released last week in Boston seem to provide evidence that high-ranking church officials in the Archdiocese of Boston did just that. Most shocking were revelations that, though church officials were aware for more than 30 years of the threat of sexual abuse posed by Father Paul Shanley, they did little more than transfer him from parish to parish.
One of the main functions of the criminal law is to express society's condemnation for wrongful conduct. By imposing criminal sanctions not just on individuals but on organizations as well, society expresses the view that the failure to avoid the conduct to which corporate blame attaches has been a collective one. By prosecuting entities, we acknowledge the fact that a corporation is not merely the sum of its individual parts, but has an existence that transcends such parts -- a fact that helps explains why we accord such entities a separate legal identity in the first place.
Prosecuting entities can make good policy sense as well. First, it avoids the phenomenon of scapegoating, whereby relatively low-level officials end up paying the price for wrongs committed by their corporate overseers. (Think Exxon Valdez skipper Joseph Hazelwood.) Second, since it's generally easier to persuade a jury to impose a criminal fine on a corporation than to send an individual white-collar defendant (especially one with no prior criminal record) to jail, prosecuting the entity is more likely to lead to at least some form of conviction. Third, prosecuting entities allows prosecutors to sidestep the enormously difficult question of determining exactly which individuals within a given organization should be held responsible. Finally, imposing liability on an enterprise can provide an effective means of encouraging it to adopt internal policies and controls intended to deter future wrongdoing.
Prosecution of the Catholic Church, the Archdiocese of Boston, or some other church entity would in no way denigrate the numerous decent and law-abiding priests, nuns and parishioners of the church, who every day perform countless acts of goodness and charity. Such people should be regarded as no more "criminal" than the innocent shareholders and rank-and-file employees who have a stake in Enron and Arthur Andersen.
The fact that the Catholic Church is a nonprofit, religious institution should not save it from criminal prosecution. As the sexual abuse scandal itself illustrates, a nonprofit, charitable organization is just as capable of causing serious criminal harm as any for-profit, business corporation.
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington has just offered a proposal that would require every diocese in the United States to notify civil authorities of any credible allegation of sexual abuse. This proposal reflects just the kind of "cultural" change that the church so desperately needs. Still, the fact remains that many crimes have already been committed, and that our system demands justice in those cases. As prosecutors decide whether and how to prosecute these crimes, they should consider the possibility of prosecuting not only the responsible individuals, but also the responsible entities.
Green is professor of law at Louisiana State University and chair-elect of the Criminal Justice Section of the Association of American Law Schools.
|
Does he want to prosecute all of us Catholics? Or just proclaim our Church a criminal enterprise on the order of, say, the Gambino Family.
Yeah, that won't harm the vast majority of good and faithful priests, nuns, and the parishioners who support them. / sarcasm
By imposing criminal sanctions not just on individuals but on organizations as well, society expresses the view that the failure to avoid the conduct to which corporate blame attaches has been a collective one.
There is not a collective guilt here. There are a number of guilty priests, and there are a number of people who exercised poor judgement in the way they handled this issue.
Third, prosecuting entities allows prosecutors to sidestep the enormously difficult question of determining exactly which individuals within a given organization should be held responsible.
Yes - By punishing everyone.
Prosecution of the Catholic Church, the Archdiocese of Boston, or some other church entity would in no way denigrate the numerous decent and law-abiding priests, nuns and parishioners of the church, who every day perform countless acts of goodness and charity. Such people should be regarded as no more "criminal" than the innocent shareholders and rank-and-file employees who have a stake in Enron and Arthur Andersen.
Bullsh*t. Tell that to the good employees of Andersen (and that is most of them, BTW) who will likely lose their jobs, and partners who will lose their life savings, in many cases.
Next, he'll suggest RICO suits and use of forfeiture laws against us.
In the end, this will lead, not to prosecution, but to persecution.
There are evil men in the priesthood. They should be punished severely. There are evil men in the hierarchy who hid them and enabled them and probably committed similiar crimes. They should be punished severely.
But the call for prosecuting Catholic Church will not end with prosecution in the anti-Catholic environment of this country's mainstream media.
They've already thought of that. As of last night, there were already two RICO suits filed against the Church.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
This certainly is ambitious. The left is going after the Jews and the Catholics at the same time. They must think they're a lot stronger than I think they are.