“Chapter 11 is not supposed to be a vehicle, a method, to hammer down the claims of those abused.”
JUDGE LOUISE DeCARL ADLER
on the diocese filing for bankruptcy
JUDGE LOUISE DeCARL ADLER
on the diocese filing for bankruptcy
Posted on 11/03/2007 7:05:59 AM PDT by NYer
The San Diego Catholic diocese's eight-month-old bankruptcy case drew to an emotional close yesterday with the judge shedding tears and scolding the church for being “disingenuous” in reporting its finances to parishioners as part of a campaign to fund a $198 million settlement with victims of sexual abuse.
“Chapter 11 is not supposed to be a vehicle, a method, to hammer down the claims of those abused.”
JUDGE LOUISE DeCARL ADLER on the diocese filing for bankruptcy |
Judge Louise DeCarl Adler said she had planned to grant the diocese's request to dismiss the bankruptcy without comment. But then she got a packet in the mail from her former parish asking to help pay the settlement.
The mailing, which was recently sent to parishioners in the diocese, included a financial breakdown she said was less than candid.
Adler said there is ample property the church could sell or mortgage to fund the settlement, citing parking lots, houses and other holdings listed in court documents.
The diocese could have settled the claims without seeking bankruptcy, she added. “Chapter 11 is not supposed to be a vehicle, a method, to hammer down the claims of those abused,” she said.
Moments before delivering her rebuke yesterday, Adler was moved to tears by several victims who stepped forward to thank her for her work.
Rodrigo Valdivia, a diocese spokesman, said church officials were disappointed by Adler's comments and called the financial breakdown accurate. “It is not disingenuous,” he said.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed its Chapter 11 case Feb. 27, hours before the first abuse trial was to start. Bishop Robert Brom said bankruptcy protection was needed to continue the church's work while trying to compensate men and women sexually abused by priests and church workers when they were minors.
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“The diocese had enough assets to pay the fair settlement value of the claims,” he said.
The diocese settled outside bankruptcy court Sept. 7, agreeing to pay $198 million to 144 victims. Under the settlement, the payouts would be made in two installments next year.
Last month, the diocese launched Embracing Our Mission, a campaign to raise $25 million from Catholics in San Diego and Imperial counties to help pay for the settlement.
Adler does not object to Catholics being asked to contribute. “I think it's a good thing to do,” she said. But she said she was troubled that the financial breakdown was “lacking candor.”
An analysis by The San Diego Union-Tribune found the Roman Catholic bishop of San Diego holds title to more than 420 properties in the county. The bishop is also listed on dozens of other properties in Imperial and other counties.
In its battle through bankruptcy court, the diocese insisted that the 98 parishes were separate and could not be counted as assets, though the point was never resolved.
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The other half includes vacant residential parcels, single-family residences, multiple-unit buildings, condominiums, vacant parcels zoned for commercial or industrial use, stores and parking lots.
The bulk of the assets that are not churches, schools or cemetery property is assessed at about $115 million by the San Diego County Assessor's Office.
But that is only a fraction of the properties' market value, said Gary London, a San Diego real-estate economist.
“The market here doubled in the 1980s and has doubled again in the past seven years. So you can multiply many of these assessed values by a factor of at least four to get the fair market value,” he said.
Applying that multiplier, London said, the diocese “conservatively holds properties (in San Diego County) with a market value well in excess of $1 billion.”
“(Church officials) can easily get loans against these assets to satisfy this settlement,” London said.
A statement from the diocese yesterday defended the Embracing Our Mission campaign.
“It is based on an accurate analysis of actual diocesan assets without confusing these with assets that do not belong to the diocese,” said a statement sent to pastors and church staff.
San Diego is the fifth and largest diocese in the nation to declare bankruptcy. None of the others has asked parishioners and priests to directly contribute to settlements of sexual-abuse cases, said Charles Zech, an economics professor who has followed the clergy-abuse crisis from Villanova University, a Catholic school near Philadelphia.
However, in the Tucson and Spokane, Wash., bankruptcy settlements, Zech said, parishes were required to contribute and it was up to each to decide how to raise the money.
Zech, who noted that selling property other than churches, schools and cemeteries is “the first thing the diocese should do,” has polled 1,000 Catholics nationwide who regularly attend Mass about their willingness to fund abuse settlements.
His most recent poll, in 2005, found that 44 percent favored a diocesanwide collection like that proposed by Brom; 38 percent preferred a sale of church property; and 33 percent backed cuts in programs to make up the shortfall after insurance funds are exhausted.
Report: Protestant Church Insurers Handle 260 Sex Abuse Cases a Year
I think the real fleecing is the removal of wealth from Catholics so that Southern California is eventually stripped of its protection via the Sacraments and Holy Spirit. Thus, vice and the champions of sin are your wallet's enemy.
Didn’t the CA gov. just legalize the homosexual agenda for public schools? The sexual abuse to follow will mean another round of stripping wealth of CA residents. And there will be abuse in massive waves (they way birth control brought abortion).
“Judges tears”, eh? Can’t wait to see how President Hillary will weather her setbacks and failures.
**I’m sure some of the cases of pedophilia and homosexual solicitation are real as is the hypocrisy of several rebellious clergy who encouraged sin.**
And then, as in our archdiocese, some of the accusations are false and put forth by ambulance and dirt digging (falsehoods) attorneys.
That is pretty pathetic. Let’s marginalize the Roman Catholic duplicity by including other groups who have abused...
What difference does THAT make?
My feeling is that “Rule of Law” doesn’t apply to the secular in such cases. Thus, equality of the law isn’t the reality, but the fleecing of Catholics is. Unfortunately, Justice will be returned when Mercy could have been.
**Thus, equality of the law isn’t the reality, but the fleecing of Catholics is. Unfortunately, Justice will be returned when Mercy could have been.**
This is so true.
Last night, I heard the number of abuses by public school teachers — I think it was each month.
The number was astounding — in the 220s. (Thinking it was on Bill O’Reilly which I watched for a short time.)
I picture someone at their judgment telling our Lord, "But they did it too".
Each & every real case of abuse is inexcusable, but I'm not sure if cash being given to victims is the answer, especially as it promotes more circling of the wagons.
My feeling is that the spirit of the times already militates against the rule of law. The law we have is not something America could come up with from scratch if she had to try. Most of our formal and informal institutions have been merely cannibalizing from old cultural achievements for a long time now, so enticing are the promises of secular materialism. This is why we have to write off the America that is staring us in the face, and struggle to build a new America in our own “little” ways.
Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery; but, flattery will get you no where. America, because of the blasphemous slogans the ruling have adopted as law, is bestial at best.
We have materialist-behaviorist schooling that teaches people to assume secular premises, become habituated to them, and play them out in the school environment (which is simply a model of the society-at-large). OTOH, Religion with a capital "R" is out the door.
School is the dream-child of egoists who fell prey to the secularist temptation to see everything around us as a staging ground for our own, this-worldly ambitions. Thus, school has tremendous misguided, egotistical ambition driving it.
The great temptation for us is to jump aboard the secularist bandwagon - to "find a way to make the schools better." What that means is to stay wedded to the secularist dream even if the good things around us need to be destroyed in the pursuit thereof.
I think you’re correct about the “jumping on the bandwagon” warning. There’s no re-energizing a failed social program. The public school system must have a competitor for the whole to improve. Public schools have no competing education institutions or teachers’ unions to motivate it to improve. Simply have multiple competitors will stir up the market. Also, teaching unions must not be allowed to fix prices similar to how all businesses must compete in an open and free market. Multiple conservative states will have to initiate competing teacher’s unions at the same time the same way Pro-Lifers must fight abortion on as many fronts as possible. This keeps the monopolizing thugs from fixing and defeating families on solitiary battlefields the same way that pro-abortion forces can’t engage in multiple courts (dead babies aren’t popular enough to sustain abortion money in multiple courts and for multiple pro-abort candidates). Grassroots action overcomes this dragon.
The difference is that the parishes are the individual churches and they are financially self-sufficient. They are subordinate to the diocese but they pay their own way and they exist for the benefit of the people who belong to them.
If the diocese were forced to sell some of the parishes in order to pay this legal settlement, it would mean that those churches and whatever schools were attached to them would have to be closed, which would devastate their members. Frankly, I don’t think that the faithful of the diocese should be punished for the sins of a few priests by having their churches closed. What kind of justice is that? Let the diocese sell some of its other properties if it must but it should not be forced to close and sell parishes since this harms people who were not responsible for the sex abuse scandal in the Church.
You better believe that some of the accusations are false and that some innocent priests have had their lives and reputations ruined because of them.
But my question is, Is it just to force a diocese to sell its assets, especially parishes and schools, in order to pay the legal settlement to the victims of abuse? How does harming lay Catholics by closing schools and parishes make up for the abuse that these victims allegedly suffered? Would that satisfy justice or would it merely satisfy a desire for vengeance? I think it is the latter.
Exactly. Because the Catholic Church has a structure, it was the first one to be subjected to attack. Sexual abuse in the Protestant Churches has slipped through the cracks for lack of central authority. The worst abuse, however, is to be found in the nation's public schools.
We live in a society where sex permeates every aspect of our lives - from commercials to the silver screen and the internet. Is it any wonder that some deviants seek it out where children are most often found and great trust is shown by unsuspecting parents?
One has to know the journalistic history of these two reporters who were on this story from the beginning. Knowing that would tell a lot about how the “news” reports have been handled.
It would also help to know the background of this: the name of the L.A. activist judge who worked with 2 activist lawyers to have a one-year suspension of statute of limitations, which gave the lawyers and their “researchers” a year to seek out and dredge up abuse cases—to the considerable financial benefits of all concerned in this process.
This does not in any way excuse the facts of the evil done.
But as Albion Girl once posted—(going on memory here)-—”I always thought it was a mistake of those who were molested to seek their justice with money”
One has to be in the pews day by day and week by week to hear what the good pastors and good priests are saying about this and to realize what a cross they bear, and to observe the grace and dignity they are demonstrating in the face of it all.
We as, Catholic lay people, bear the burden not only with these good priests, but we also bear the burden and cross that was visited upon us by the priests who did such wrong.
May God have mercy on us all.
“Thought your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow”.
May all of us be brought to repentance for one another, that all of us may hear: “The man who is in Christ Jesus is a new creation”.
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