Well, if Catholic organisations are involved in an illegal cover-up of criminal activity, they should be subject to the same laws against this kind of behaviour as anyone else. If that’s RICO, so be it.
Popular opinion notwithstanding, the Catholic church is actually quite a devolved and decentralised organisation. The important unit is the diocese; each bishop is primarily responsible for controlling and managing his own diocese, but the US bishops collectively have little authority. They meet a few times a year to discuss matters of common interest, but there is no way the bishop’s conference can tell an individual bishop what to do, or require an individual bishop to tell them what he is doing. So establishing come kind of conspiracy or collective guilt at the level of the national bishops’ conference would be difficult, and (without knowing much about how RICO operates) I would have thought that invoking the legislation against specific dioceses was more likely to succeed than any attempt to invoke it against the US RCC as a whole.
Also if it’s a question of getting at church property either to compensate victims or to punish the institutions, lawsuits against individual dioceses (or individual religious orders) are more likely to be effective. All the property is held at that level; the bishops’ conference would have little or nothing worth seizing. Nor is it likely that it has any public liability insurance.
Proceeding against the national bishops’ conference might have great symbolic value (although, of course, if the proceedings were to fail the symbolism would be all the wrong way).
Actually, “its ways” have been changed in a number of diocese. I say go ahead and nail the people (Law, etc.) who have continued to stonewall throughout this period. However, in the interest of accuracy, it should be noted that the RCC is simply not the great monolithic institution that either its most rabid defenders or its fiercest opponents make it out to be.
Actually, suing all the bishops in the U.S. could be better for the RCC than for the plaintiff. If it ever goes to trial, and all the information is presented, it should become pretty apparent that the loose association that characterizes the RCC in the U.S. has widely varying responses ranging from a “no tolerance/hand him to the cops” attitude to a “we never speak of that sort of thing” set of conspiracies at the local levels. Trying to prove that everyone is in on it when clearly many are not might damage the plaintiff’s case.
Actually, it has been the Establishment Clause that has historically been used to provide legal support for the “Seal of Confession.” The argument would be that a religious belief and practice would be abrogated if the government attempted to compel a priest to violate that religious discipline.
This is in keeping with allowing people to refuse medical services on religious grounds–even to denying aid for their children. One can argue the opposing view, of course, but all the precedents support these actions as being government non-interference rather than government support.
(I’ve waited about a half hour since this reply was first attempted and have used a separate browser window to make sure it did not show up, so if this is a duplicate it is all vB’s fault.)
Tom, this morning I would have agreed with you, but at lunch I picked up Time magazine. I’m going to want to look into this a bit more, but two things in the article stuck out.
First, upon appointment, a Cardinal takes a vow to “keep in confidence anything that, if revealed, would cause a scandal or harm to the Church.”
Second, last year, John Paul II directed, a motu proprio, that allegations of sexual abuse against priests were to be brought secretly for judgment by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Informing civil authorities was not directed.
By themselves, these two bits are not enough to demonstrate that the whole Church was acting in concert on these issues, but they represent a huge step closer to that conclusion. At the very least, as an attorney, I would be using these two little titbits as the basis for demanding intensive discovery.
For what it’s worth, it seems to me that the plaintiff would face difficulty in establishing a good RICO claim.
The biggest problem, it seems to me, is the statute of limitations, which for RICO is 4 years IIRC. If he was abused in the 1980s, then the statute would seem to have run.
Or am I missing something?
As far as jurisdiction goes, I think that there would be no problem with U.S. Courts exercising jurisdiction over the RCC, since it has such a large presence in the USA. Is the RCC the defendant here?
The motu proprio statement is certainly a point that will need to be investigated.
(I do note that it appears to have been followed only by those diocese that were already stonewalling on the issue. Those diocese that implemented realistic guidelines in the early 1990s have not suddenly stopped reporting protests to the authorities in the last year and several dicocese that have “gotten the word” since the Boston situation made national headlines in January have been publicly ignoring the motu proprio in the last two months in order to “clean house” before the public shows up with torches and pitchforks. The RCC is simply not as tightly run as all that, regardless of public perceptions.)
The “oath” that cardinals purportedly take makes for good conspiracy reading, but has little to do with the situation. Egan and Law may have wanted to take comfort from such a vow if it exists, but most diocese are run by bishops, not cardinals, and even a cardinal-archbishop has only limited jurisdiction or capability to control the actions of those diocese that “report” to the archdiocese.
The Time article , itself, mentions diocese (several run by cardinals) who have publicly dismissed or suspended priests who have been accused in the last year. So they certainly do not appear to be following either their “vow” to broach no scandal nor the “command” to send all such charges secretly to the Vatican.
The statute of limitations could be avoided in this instance under two theories.
RICO is directed at “patterns” of criminal activity. The fact that one of the acts that is part of that pattern occurred too far back in time to fall within the statute of limitations would not necessarily bar a RICO claim seeking damages for that particular act, if the pattern continued (caveat: I’ve done RICO work, but the statute of limitations wasn’t a factor in my cases. I’m pretty sure this is how it works, but not certain.)
It is likely that the RICO violation alleged here is the cover-up of the sexual abuse. That would be ongoing up to the present time, thus obviating the statute of limitations.
Dunno if the RCC is the defendant, though I rather doubt that it is. There is indeed a huge problem with exercising jurisdiction over the RCC - sovereign immunity. The RCC, as Vatican City or the Holy See, would be a sovereign immune from civil liability in US courts. There may be some wiggle room given the dual nature of the RCC as nation and religious organization, but the issue is probably a loser. Better defendants would be the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the individual diocese within the U.S.
Under RICO, the enterprise doesn’t have to be a unitary, monolithic or legally recognized entity (remember, RICO was originally enacted to fight the Mafia, which didn’t register as a corporation ).
The seven necessary elements of a civil RICO claim are:
(1) that the defendant[s]
(2) through the commission of two or more acts
(3) constituting a ‘pattern’
(4) of ‘racketeering activity’
(5) directly or indirectly invests in, or maintains an interest in, or participates in
(6) an ‘enterprise’
(7) the activities of which affect interstate or foreign commerce.
The Catholic Conference would probably meet the “enterprise” requirement. An enterprise is more than a mere conspiracy; it must have a structure and operate as a continuing unit for a common purpose.
Racketeering activity is a list of delineated federal and state felonies. The most commonly-cited felonies in civil RICO cases are wire and mail fraud - these federal felonies are amazingly broad - the wires and mails need not be used to commit the actual fraud, but may only be used to “further” it in order for these statutes to be implicated.
“Pattern” is pretty self-explanatory, although, as in everything in the law, there are nuances.
Honestly, I doubt this theory would fly. The Supreme Court rejected the “last predicate act” rule a while ago. It seems to me that that’s what you’re basically arguing for.
I think this argument has the same problem as the previous one.
In any event, I believe that RICO requires that the defendant be damaged by the actual predicate acts, not overt acts in furtherance of a conspiracy.
If the RICO predicate acts alleged here are mail fraud and wire fraud, the plaintiff must allege how he was damaged by the fraud. Perhaps he will argue that the RCC had an obligation to let him know of previous, covered-up instances of sexual abuse before his own abuse. But then he’s back against the statute of limitations problem.
that’s certainly possible.
Agree. Note that there’s a distinction between the RICO “enterprise” and the actual RICO violator. If the Catholic Conference is named as the enterprise, the plaintiff must choose other defendants, at least for that count of his complaint.
(8) causing injury to the plaintiff.
Sorry to be so nit-picky, but the last element could pose a big problem for this plaintiff.
Agree. Keep in mind the defendant/enterprise distinction.
Agree. Anyway, I’m not saying that the SoL issue is a sure loser for the plaintiff, but I’m having trouble seeing how he would get around it.
).