What Would Jesus Do? It’s a touchstone, a way to see whether a proposed course of action is in keeping with what the questioner think Jesus would do in such a circumstance. Consider it a personal quality/mission statement. It’s not a bad idea, really, if you’re into that sort of thing (and if you don’t batter other folks over the head with it), and it’s most commonly heard and seen among more evangelical Protestant sects.
Which is why, perhaps, the Catholic hierarchy seems to have it at the bottom of their list as they continue to struggle with the sexual abuse cover-up scandal. After engaging in some flashy PR and some less-flashy stonewalling, the current tactic is to play hardball with accusers, hoping either to get law suits dropped or else substantially reduce awards. This article does a damning job of describing some truly disturbing tactics by lawyers working for various dioceses throughout the US.
The tactics used by the Church here echo those used in days gone by in less holy abuse and rape cases. Hire PIs to dig up dirt on the accusers and their families. File counter-suits. Grill the alleged victims in deposition or on the stand until they break down (and, perhaps, drop the charges). Ask them what they did to bring it on, did they enjoy the sexual encounter, what other sexual activities have they engaged in, and so on, and so on. Done interrogating the once (or still) kids? Turn on the parents. What home problems have they had? Can they be accused of negligence for being being over-trusting of church workers and officials, of basically letting their kids get molested?
None of these tactics play in criminal court, of course. At least, they’re not supposed to. But in the no-holds-barred bare-fisted brawling of civil court, such tactics can work fine to turn the focus back on the victim.
Granted, the Church must not simply roll over and pay off any accuser. These things do get falsely reported, and the Church has both a fiduciary and moral responsibility both to defend its own, where appropriate, and to protect its ability to do good in the wide array of areas where it does so. And it’s also true that, in the limelight of a civil case, the plaintiff’s lawyers will almost certainly get as down-and-dirty as is needed to paint the alleged abuse in the most gory, lurid and everything-bad-that’s-happened-since-in-this-person’s-life-is-due-to-this fashion.
But there seems, to me at least, to be a world of difference between trying to get at the truth and acting accordingly, and diving headlong into the brutal and adversarial world of civil court, where truth often matters less than perception. Surely there are other tactics that Church lawyers could engage in that would be more appropriate, more dignified, more compassionate. That’s part of what it means, it would seem to me, to be a moral authority. With great power comes great responsibility, to coin a phrase. If you can’t carry your moral beliefs into the real world, maybe there’s something wrong with them.
“They [church officials] are signaling that they are willing to litigate very aggressively, and if they win . . . it could deter others from coming forward,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of Southern California law professor. “If they lose,” he added, “it’s a public relations disaster.”
Actually, to my mind, it’s already a PR disaster. The Church has already been deeply damaged, as a moral institution, by trying to protect its good name at the expense of those who were abused by it. Now it runs the risk of coming off as a soulless corporation whose only interest is in protecting its coffers, regardless of who gets trampled in the process.
What would Jesus do? Try John 11:35. Or maybe even Matthew 23.