$880 Million in Reparations

A recent America Magazine article detailed how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles will have to pay $880 million in settlement payments for a record 1,300 sexual abuse claims. These claims all fall outside the statute of limitations, with some incidents dating back to the 1940s.

This is horrifying, enraging, and soul-crushing. That it happened is a disaster. That it was covered up for so long is a tragedy. That the people of the Archdiocese–parishioners with their own needs–will be the ones paying for the sins of past clerical leaders is a shame.

Rest assured, if you are donating any amount of undesignated funds to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, a percentage of that will go towards paying these settlements. In the Archdiocese of Philadelphia‘s Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (IRRP), the diocese acquired the roughly $78 million needed by selling assets and having their own offices pay up. The Office of Catholic Education paid $8 million in a “risk mitigation payment” to the fund. That money came from reserves funded by tuition payments.

The same fate will meet Los Angeles 10 fold. Parishes will close, departments will be starved of funds, and needs will go unmet. Meanwhile, the bishops will continue to live in prestigious quarters with every meal provided for them. They will not be devastated by the failures of their predecessors like the victims. But they will have to clean up their mess.

May leadership be under scrutiny as a perpetual institution.

Write, then Think

Today I told my students the truth about writing and thinking:

When you write, you think. Neurons in your brain start firing in a familiar pattern until there’s no more neural connections in that area. That’s when some students stop writing–when they run out of ideas. They believe they can only write about what they think about first.

This is exactly when you must keep writing.

When you keep writing in the face of a dead-end neural pathway, you have no choice but to write about something else. You go to another section of neural connections, then transcribe that though process on the page. Then another, and another. You keep writing about what you do know about, what you can uncover within your own mind, or about some questions you have about that which you don’t know.

Every now and then, that process of writing, then writing more, allows you to draw connections neural connections between the ideas you wrote down, pathways you didn’t previously have. And you have just learned something new, without turning to an outside source. It was within your own mind. A self-revelation, a connection, a link that might shift your perception from here on out.

So write, and keep writing. Do not think first, just write. Let your thoughts flow then let them snag, trip, scrape their knees, and flow again. In this way writing is an act of courage–it’s going where your mind hasn’t gone before, into the unknown. Into yourself.