Wages of Sin

I recently learned that the diocese of Camden in my homestate of New Jersey has agreed to an $87.5 million cash settlement to over 300 victims of sexual abuse.  This sort of news, though it's become all too familiar, still makes me sick to my stomach.  The victims certainly deserve the compensation.  They deserve far more than that.  They deserve justice.  But what makes me and so many of us furious is the knowledge that the situation that created an environment that permitted perverts to be ordained -- as well as the bishops who were complicit in the protection of this environment -- could have been avoided.

For fifteen years, I was an employee of another diocese in New Jersey.  I had given up a public school teaching position to teach at a Catholic high school.  I knew this decision meant a sacrifice for myself and my family -- less pay, benefits, pension, etc.  But I believed that the spiritual rewards would be worth it.  As it turned out, the school was able to match the salary I had been making at the public school (which wasn't all that high since I'd only been at that school for four years).  In the few years that followed, the faculty enjoyed at least a small annual pay increase of anywhere between 1.5% to 2.5%.  But that eventually stopped.  We were told that, due to budgetary issues in the diocese, pay increases would be frozen.  This of course amounted to a decrease in earnings, since the cost of living did not undergo a similar freeze.

Similiarly, benefits were also reduced over the years.  Contributions to employee pension funds were discontinued.  A cap was placed on compensation for unused sick days.  I recall colleagues who had hundreds of unused sick days, but were compensated for only a small handful.

One day, toward the end of the school year, I was unexpectedly summoned to a conference room where I was told by administrators that, due to budget issues, all foreign language offerings (with the exception of Spanish) were to be cut.  This meant that I, as the German and Japanese teacher, was no longer needed.  The fact that I could also teach Theology, English, and other subjects was not taken into consideration.  They needed to reduce payroll, and I was an easy target.

For fifteen years of loyal service, I made a reasonable request for severance pay.  The diocese treated this request as though it were comical.  No funds in the budget for such things.  The question I would like to raise is, and I believe it's a valid one, if a diocese has no funds to provide its employees with a living wage and just compensation, then how does it somehow manage to find the tens of millions for lawsuit settlements?

As a result of such mistreatment, I do not contribute to second collections or the bishop's annual appeal.  Sadly, I may even turn down a request to teach catechism classes, because I refuse to comply with mandates established by the diocese.  In myraid ways, we are all victims of the sins of the Church hierarchy.