by Deanna Cantrell
The price a child pays when sexually abused by a priest is unmeasurable.  The trauma goes beyond the physical, but leaves lasting scars long into adulthood.  The price the U.S. Catholic Church has incurred for employing predators?  $4 billion and counting.  That number accounts for 65 years according to an extensive NCR investigation of media reports, databases and church documents.
In addition, separate research recently published calculates that other scandal-related consequences such as lost membership and diverted giving has cost the church more than $2.3 billion annually for the past 30 years.
It is interesting to note that after a sex scandal, membership and thus donations are reported to decrease.┬á An academic paper titled “Losing My Religion: The Effects of Religious Scandals on Religious Participation and Charitable Giving,” written by two Chilean-born economists, Nicolas L. Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Truglia, the paper identifies more than 3,000 scandal events throughout the United States from 1980 to 2010 and tracks how the scandals have affected religious affiliation and charitable giving.
It confirms a widely held belief among many social scientists that a causal relationship exists between religious 
affiliation and charitable giving. Indeed, the paper states that the “decline in charitable giving is an order of magnitude larger than the direct costs of the scandals to the Catholic churches (e.g., lawsuits).”
According to its authors, while the sum of lawsuits and other abuse-related costs over the last 40 years is estimated to total about $3 billion for the church, the decline in charitable giving costs the church an average of $2.36 billion per year.┬á “The estimates suggest that each scandal caused a decline of 1.3% in the total itemized charitable giving in the affected zip code per year,” Harvard-trained economist Perez-Truglia explained in an email. “Multiplying that 1.3% by the total itemized giving in the zip codes affected by the 3,000+ scandals results in a decline in itemized contributions of about $1.77 billion per year.
Perhaps parishioners would rather not have their donations go toward such a cause.┬á With reports reaching as far back as the 1950ÔÇÖs clearly what the church is doing does not focus on prevention.┬á While in Philadelphia, PA Pope Francis said:
“God weeps for the sexual abuse of children. These cannot be maintained in secret, and I commit to a careful oversight to ensure that youth are protected and all responsible will be held accountable. Those who have survived this abuse have become true heralds of mercy – humbly, we owe each of them our gratitude for their great value as they have had to suffer this terrible abuse sexual abuse of minors,”
So far Pope Francis has met with survivors, what the future has in store is yet to be seen.
View the full report mentioned here at NCR Online.