Window Laws, in Today's News 06.11.09

Window Laws. Appeasement seldom works. It usually only encourages the aggressor to be even more aggressive. Such is the case of the Catholic Church's appeasement in its handling of the sex-abuse scandals in the United States. The failure of the Church leaders to recognize a full blown attack on the reputation of the Church, to roll over and play dead, and then to hand over millions and millions of dollars has only whetted the appetite of those out to get the Church.

Now the Church leaders face the new escalation of the scandal in the form of "window laws" which attempt to bypass statute of limitation laws.  WSJ: "But triggered by high-profile scandals of abuse at the hand of Catholic priests, some of which occurred decades ago, a few states have seen the need for 'window laws' that temporarily open the courts again to allow past grievances to be remedied through civil actions, although not criminal prosecutions."

And so now the Church leaders are forced to fight a rear-guard action to prevent the adoption of a clearly unconstitutional law that further imperils the Church with allegations that are virtually impossible to disprove given the passage of decades of time. "Defense attorneys say many of the abuse cases that were brought in California and now in Delaware name perpetrators and religious superiors who are dead or retired. The only point, says some attorneys, is to wrench money from the Catholic Church. 'It's almost impossible to defend the cases,' says Mark Chopko, the former counsel for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops..." (Emphasis added.)

The only reason the Church leaders find themselves attempting to stop the 'window laws' is because the opposition sees the leaders as easy marks. The trial lawyers have already extracted enormous amounts of money from the Church without much of a fight by the Church leaders. Why not go for more? Why not see if they can break the Church's finances and reputation?

The accommodationist policies of the Church leaders, adopted primarily out of Vatican II, lead to messes like this. The way things are going, it is going to have to take divine intervention to get the Church leaders to remember and act on the words of Jesus (Matthew 10:26), "Behold I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." (!!!!!)