Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - In the weeks since the Buffalo Catholic Diocese reached a $150 million settlement in its clergy abuse case, the family of parishes within the Diocese has been getting a picture of the amount of money they will be asked to allocate to help pay off the settlement.
The parishes will be responsible for $80 million of the $150 million settlement, with the Diocese drawing between 10% and 80% from parishes' unrestricted cash and investments, which doesn't include prepaid tuition, Mass offerings and donor-restricted gifts.
Here is a look at the formula being used by the Buffalo Diocese to determine parish contributions. The dollar amount represents a parish's unrestricted funds, followed by the percentage of those funds that can be used to pay for the settlement:
- Less than $250,000/10%
- Less than $500,000/25%
- Less than $750,000/45%
- Less than $1,000,000/55%
- More than $1,000,000/65%
- More than $3,000,000/75%
- Merging or closing parishes/80%
Related
This formula to determine how much each parish is set to contribute to the settlement does not sit well with Philip Gray, president and canon lawyer from the St. Joseph Foundation.
"I do not believe the Diocese's rationale or methodology reflects the obligations that the bishop has to the people of his diocese. I believe the methodology violates the canon law of the Catholic Church," said Gray in an interview with WBEN.
He says regardless of how the Diocese wants to classify it, Gray is encouraging pastors of the parishes to not pay whatever they have been tabbed with.
"I know the Diocese has kind of equivocated between saying this is an assessment of the parishes and/or it's a contribution. And, of course, in some of their documentation, they imply that this is an obligatory payment that the parishes have to make. And certainly the way they have arranged it and the way they portrayed it in the vicariate meetings would indicate that, but they keep pushing back, saying publicly, 'This is just a free will donation.' Whether it's one or the other, it's contrary to canon law," Gray explained. "Both of those possibilities for a parish to donate money as a free will donation or to pay a tax or an assessment to the Diocese are governed very specifically in the canons of the church. And the canons that regulate both of those situations are violated by this methodology."
According to Gray, there is a recourse procedure as part of canon law that individuals or groups can pursue to correct any kind of bad decision or maladministration of the Catholic Church. Many of the groups are already familiar with that process in the ongoing fight to save their parish from mergers.
"It is pretty much the same process they would use to challenge the assessments that are being laid on the parishes. So under canon law, they would follow a similar process they followed with the parish merger appeals," Gray said. "In the common law of New York, or the civil law, I don't know what that would be. I am not a civil lawyer, but I have encouraged the people that they may want to retain a civil lawyer to explore their options regarding these assessments, since each parish is separately incorporated in the State of New York, and the people themselves do have an investment as donors to these parishes."
Related
While Gray cannot comment on the process of the payments being done in secular law, he believes the Buffalo Diocese has created wrongful entanglement issues between the civil process and the canonical process.
"At the present time, my concern - this isn't a legal observation, as much as it is just someone watching from the sidelines - it's amazing to me that these parishes are carrying about 75% of the settlement weight, but they were not able to choose their representatives to hash out that settlement in the civil courts," Gray noted. "Let me put it this way: There's well over 150 parishes in the Diocese, every parish is separately incorporated. The Diocese is separately incorporated from the parishes. The Diocese files Chapter 11 [bankruptcy], and then they file this process to incorporate all of the parishes into the Chapter 11 settlement in order to avoid lawsuits against any parish. So now you have over 150 defendants in this lawsuit, and you have over 150 plaintiffs in the Chapter 11 settlement pursuit. But only one of those plaintiffs is choosing their representatives in the court, and that's the Diocese. But all the others, the vast majority are going to carry 75% of the financial weight of the settlement, but they weren't able to choose anyone to represent them in those settlement discussions? I kind of have a problem with that."
He recommends parishes to find a civil lawyer in the State of New York who would review their situation and give them some frank advice on what can and can't be done to correct the abuse. On the canon law side, he says the parishes should be pursuing the same avenues they pursued to defend themselves against the mergers.
Meanwhile, how is the amount each victim is given with this clergy abuse settlement determined?
Attorney Steve Boyd, who represents many of the survivors of clergy abuse in Buffalo, says it's not simple math where everything is divided equally among the victims.
"It is a process by which our side will hire a claims examiner and we'll go through all of the proofs of claim, and all of the survivors who brought proofs of claim will be able to supplement the information to the claims examiner. And then the claims examiner will determine, using usually a points system, how much each individual person gets," explained Boyd in an appearance with Brian Mazurowski and Susan Rose on WBEN. "There are people who were abused a single time and they healed well, there are people who were abused a single time and it had a devastating effect on them in the rest of their lives. There are people who were abused over long periods of time. So every case is a different case, and the claims examiner's job will be to allocate how much each individual receives."
That process, from shortly after settlement was reach, was expected to take about three months or a little longer.
"The hiring of the expert is something that will be funded, and that person will be paid for this. But there are people around the country, a handful, who have done this in other diocesan cases, other sex abuse cases, other mass court cases. It's not a job that I would envy. It's going to be extremely difficult, but I think they have their process, and I think they'll work through it," Boyd said.
Boyd says this settlement with the Buffalo Diocese is the second-largest cash settlement paid by a Catholic entity in the entire State of New York.
"Rockville Center is a little bit bigger, it is almost triple what the Diocese of Rochester is paying in cash. The Diocese of Syracuse is paying $100 million in cash," he noted. "There's an expression in the bankruptcy world: If you've seen one bankruptcy, you've seen one bankruptcy. Every case is different. Every church has different amounts of assets, cash, real estate, whatever. We were shown all of the assets of this diocese. We were allowed at one point to search the basement of the Catholic Center for insurance documents and asset information. We've done an extremely thorough job over the last five years, it's been painstaking. It's not been as painful for us as it's been for the survivors who've had to wait and feel that betrayal each time we don't reach a settlement. So each time there's hope and it doesn't happen, it's been very difficult for them. But we're hoping that this brings people some peace and some closure and some measure of healing."
Related
The agreement to reach a settlement was not the end, though, for Boyd and his legal team. With that in the rearview mirror, Phase II of the process immediately began, which focuses on mediation to try and reach a settlement with the insurance companies for the Diocese.
While the settlement amounts for the victims will vary, Boyd acknowledges there isn't a dollar amount that will fully bring justice to some who suffered more damages than others in this case.
"We have a lot of clients who've had drug, alcohol problems, problems holding down a job, the list goes on-and-on-and-on. There isn't enough money to compensate a person for that. That's the difficulty of this. We wish we could tell every client that there was a dollar amount and that would make you whole again, but there isn't one," he said. "So because the Catholic Church has decided on this use of the bankruptcy system, which we believe is a misuse of the bankruptcy system but they have used it, and if they're following the Bankruptcy Law, it's frustrating that on average, people will get, certainly, less than I think they would have gotten had they been able to bring their case to State Supreme Court or to federal court, and have their case heard in front of a jury."
The Buffalo Diocese is set to speak with members of the media on Wednesday.