Jim's March 2017 (thejournal.ie) link says

In 2002, an indemnity agreement was entered into by the Fianna Fáil Government and 18 religious orders. Under this agreement, the congregations agreed to hand over €128 million in cash and property. This was increased to €353 million after the publication of the Ryan report.

The article says Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and (former) Taoiseach Enda Kenny say that the religious orders should make good on their 2002 agreement. I do wonder if the religious orders agreed to the increase when their liability was almost tripled after publication of the Ryan report.

Martin was appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 2004, and many think he has been quite good in responding to the child abuse scandal. But I'm in a leadership position in the Mercy Associates, and I can tell you that the wealth of the religious orders of Ireland is an illusion. There have been very few new priests and sisters and brothers in recent years, and the assets of the religious orders are being used to operate nursing homes for retired members. Just last year, the Sisters of Mercy closed and sold a huge motherhouse at Tralee. Such buildings are expensive to maintain and of little practical use, so it will most likely be torn down. The motherhouse in Kinsale was sold long ago. The original Mercy convent on Baggot Street in Dublin was going to be closed and sold, but a consortium of Mercy sisters from around the world took it over and turned it into an international center. I visited a number of convents in Ireland last time I was there, and I can tell you that the sisters are not living in luxury. I can see how it's difficult for them to pay this huge debt. Old convents are not easy to sell, and it's even tougher to sell old churches and old schools and other large institutions. A friend of mine is head of the Loretto Sisters in the U.S. - it took her five years to sell her order's motherhouse, and the proceeds of the sale were quite limited. And what happens to the old priests and nuns should their religious orders go bankrupt?

Up above, I tried to explain the power structure of the Catholic Church. It is highly decentralized, and always has been. Each diocese and each religious order is a separate entity that causes and should be obliged to resolve its own problems. I'm part of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. We have our own leadership and our own liabilities. Why should we be responsible for the mistakes of the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland?

Jim like to blame "The Church" for everything bad that is done by Catholics, wherever they may be. He won't admit to it even though you can see it for yourself above in this thread, but he has often shamed me personally for all sorts of things because I am Catholic and he claims I support and defend the misconduct done in the name of the Catholic Church.

I think that "The Church" is an abstraction. It isn't "The Church" that commits crime. It is real people who do those things, and I wholeheartedly agree that they should be prosecuted and forced to make reparations. I think that it is important that those people who were responsible be identified - the blame should go to those who deserve the blame. And Jim won't like to hear this, but I think that some partial blame is due to those who stood by and did nothing while they knew that crimes were being committed. Jim won't hesitate to blame current Catholics like me for the crimes that were committed in Ireland forty or fifty years ago, but somehow he seems to think that Irish people who were there at the time are free of blame if they are no longer Catholic. It gets a little foggy here, but that's what it seems that Jim is saying.

Where my big question arises, is to what extent should reparations be assessed against those who did not commit the crime? And secondly, what amount of reparation payment is a fair amount to be assessed? Should the Vatican be required to sell St. Peter's and the Vatican Museum and my parish church in California to satisfy the debts of the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland?

Jim seems to see the Catholic Church as a monolith that should have financial liability for all misdeeds done in the name of the church, wherever they happened and whenever they happened.

This whole matter of reparations is sticky. In 1988, the United States agreed to pay $20,000 to each surviving inmate of the World War II internment camps where Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War II. I thought that was fair and reasonable, but there are also proposals to compensate African-Americans for slavery and Native Americans for property loss and relocation that took place during the 19th century. While I agree that the actions of the United States against slaves and Indians was appalling, the ancestors of most current Americans did not live in North America at the time these atrocities took place. So, should current American taxpayers be liable for the misdeeds people did so long ago? The same applies to the Catholic Church of Ireland. Should the liability rest only on current Catholics, or should responsibility fall on all those whose ancestors were Catholic at the time of the crimes?

The Catholic Church here in California has held huge fundraising campaigns to recover from the loss of the money paid out to victims of sex crimes from the 1980s and 1990s. People resented the fundraisers, but the church had to get money somewhere to pay its bills.

So, it's a complicated question, and there aren't easy answers.

But I think it's important to realize that real people committed the crimes, not an abstract church; and that real people who did NOT commit the crimes are the ones who get stuck paying the reparations. I do not deny or defend the crimes. I just wonder how long I'm going to have to keep paying the cost of reparations.

-Joe Offer-