Lawyer behind archdiocese policies
My father, James A. Serritella, passed away in April 2021. For a half century before his death, my father was the chief outside legal counsel for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Since the 1980s, much of his work became focused on the clergy sex abuse crisis, an issue on which he became a national, if not international, leader.
I was heartened to see John O’Malley’s op-ed about the Chicago Archdiocese’s decadeslong approach to implementing policies that attempt to protect children (“Chicago Archdiocese’s 3 decades of taking action against sex abuse,” Oct. 16). I believe my father was the primary force behind most of the most innovative policies that attempted to bring justice and healing to victims.
Over the course of his life, my father advocated the same message over and over: the need for compassion and to do the right thing. He believed that the church’s response would be measured by the compassion it showed its victims, its fairness and the effectiveness of its outreach to the community.
Below is an excerpt of some of his writings:
“The most difficult professional challenge I faced in my half century legal career is the clerical sex abuse crisis of the Catholic Church. My educational background was mostly in the humanities, which helped me take a broader view of problems that presented themselves as being legal, but which had ramifications that went well beyond the law.
“With this in mind, we advocated a different approach. I thought that good priests and other pastoral ministers should address the problem by reaching out to those injured and trying to help them. I thought it was preferable to spend money solving the problems of the injured, rather than spending it on lawyers mustering every possible defense and failing to address the hurt that the abuse inflicted. The church should address the problem by having its own pastorally sensitive personnel reach out to those injured and try to help them. Put another way, we are representing a church and the church acts best when it acts as a church.
“Looking back on all that we have done to address the problem, we sometimes feel disappointed because these efforts go unrecognized in the public arena. Here in Chicago, we began addressing the problem early and have carried on a creative, sustained and effective effort for many years. Nonetheless, even the damage inflicted here likely will still take decades or longer to overcome and heal.”