Church needs improved checks and balances

Baltimore Archbishop William Lori said he could not explain how the former bishop of Wheeling, W. Va., Michael Bransfield, got away with his corrupt spending and sexual harassment ( July 7, “Warnings About W. Va. Bishop Went Unheeded”).

Bishop Bransfield is now gone, but it is alarming that a highly placed cleric like Archbishop Lori is still bewildered about how all this happened. The answer is clear: It happened because many members of the church hierarchy ignored at least seven years of impassioned warnings and pleas for help, primarily from the laity.

It happened because any structural safeguards against corrupt conduct by a member of the clergy, especially one who is rich and highly placed, are either absent or routinely ignored within our institutional church hierarchy. This is not a mere personnel matter, a matter of removing a specific person who becomes a “bad apple” as if he is a unique and unfortunate aberration. Rather, it is matter of an absence of checks and balances, transparency and whistleblower protections.

It is also a matter where there is a lack of authority and responsibility vested in specific and separate independent persons in a clearly understood chain of command. In the Bishop Bransfield scandal, multiple people in the church hierarchy simply shrugged, or worse, looked the other way.

There is no reason I am aware of to think that such a situation exists in the Pittsburgh Diocese, and Bishop David Zubik deserves credit for his efforts to prevent such instances here. But what about future bishops? In the absence of real structural reform, any current system of prevention could all be gone in an instant. Once a person is a bishop, it is clear he exercises total control over his diocese, without any mandatory and independent oversight by either clergy or laity. And what about the other nearly 200 dioceses in the U.S. that also operate under a similar lack of proper checks and balances, and have for many, many decades?

KEVIN HAYES Mt. Lebanon