Enhanced Accountability: The Catholic Church’s Unfinished Business (July 17, 2019). 53 University of San Francisco Law Review 165 (2019); UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 19-22. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3421795
Abstract: Events of the Summer 2018 brought the long running sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church back onto the front pages, highlighting the role of diocesan bishops in covering up the scandal and enabling abusers. In response to these developments, the Church is again considering reforms to protect victims and punish abusers and enablers. This article proposes that the Church create a system for laity to anonymously report allegations, enact strong protections for whistleblowers, and impose a mandatory whistleblowing requirement on priests. As a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report demonstrates, however, the laity was reporting the abuse to the Church but the hierarchy buried those reports in secret files. The ultimate problem thus is not so much the lack of reporting, as it was the lack of action after the report. Accordingly, the article’s principal proposal is the creation of both diocesan and national disciplinary bodies led by expert lay members as the ultimate authorities in sex abuse cases. The proposal draws an analogy between these bodies and corporate audit committees and argues that a number of aspects of how audit committees function can be usefully adapted to the proposed review bodies.
Keywords: Roman Catholic Church, corporate governance, compliance, law and economics, credence good
Sadly, the article was finalized before the USCCB's June meeting. In anticipation of the proposals likely to be considered at the June meeting, the article was revised at the last minute to critique such ideas as the metropolitan model. I was able to get that critique into the public domain by posting a revised working draft of this paper to SSRN and by writing several short essays for Public Discourse. Although the article's criticisms did not prevail, the USCCB's June 2019 reforms have a three-year sunset provision. I hope my article will provide guidance for that review.
