The sexual abuse scandals that have engulfed the Archdiocese of Boston and the Roman Catholic Church have become a powerful threat to religious liberty, said several legal scholars who spoke Saturday at a conference at a Catholic law school.
"These cases will profoundly alter the nature of organized religion," said professor Patrick Schiltz of the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. "This litigation has the potential to do to churches what many a tyrannical government could not."
The conference, at the Boston College Law School, in Newton, Mass., included many of the leading legal scholars of church-state relations, canon lawyers and the general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They acknowledged that the scandals arose from widespread and terrible abuses. But they also expressed surprise at how quickly and vigorously the law governing the activities of churches had reacted to the scandal. Several suggested that the legal system had overreacted and perhaps acted capriciously.
"Criminal liability for a diocese is now on the table, something that would have been unimaginable not long ago," said Angela Carmella, a professor at Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey.
Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Texas, said several states had "utterly absurd amendments of statutes of limitations" that let people who said they had been sexually abused sue long after the alleged abuse. He said the amendments were unnecessary and unwise. He added that looser legal standards could encourage frivolous suits.
"I am skeptical of a lot of these claims," he said. "There are some phony victims here. "
Laycock agreed that lawsuits against churches could alter the composition of the ministry.
"The pursuit of zero incidents is a mistake and an illusion," Laycock said. "You won't have a priesthood left if you do that. You should not let these cases not only blacken the name of the church and scandalize the faithful but also fundamentally change how churches operate."
Several of the speakers sought to compare churches to news and political organizations, which receive heightened protection from libel and similar suits under the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment. These speakers questioned why religious organizations were not entitled to increased protection under the religious-liberty clauses of the same amendment.
On Tuesday, a Massachusetts appeals court judge declined to allow the Archdiocese of Boston an immediate appeal of a trial judge's order rejecting its First Amendment defense in hundreds of sexual abuse cases.
Many of the claims, Schiltz said, involved seemingly consensual relationships between adults, though perhaps ones distorted by the disparity of power between a pastor and a congregant. Some of those claims, he said, were based on little more than a kiss, a lingering hug or a gift of flowers.
But these cases, he said, allow unpredictable juries to engage in antireligious animus.
"It is giving hundreds of juries around the country free shots at churches," Schiltz said. "Juries have unbounded authority to act out of religious spite."