The bishops of Colorado have endorsed a bill in the state Legislature that would put no time limit on criminal prosecution for the sexual abuse of children but would retain current time limits on civil lawsuits in such cases.

The bishops had opposed the bill as originally written because it would have eliminated time limits for civil lawsuits as well as for criminal prosecution. It was subsequently revised to retain current law on the statute of limitations for civil suits.

In an interview in the March 5 national Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor, Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said that many who are seeking a relaxation of the statute of limitations on civil suits are tort lawyers profiting from "the litigation industry" or are motivated by anti-Catholicism.

"Unless Catholics wake up right now and push back on behalf of their church, their parishes and the religious future of their children, the pillaging will continue" because of costly litigation and settlements, he said.

The archbishop said that some bishops are reluctant to fight back as hard as the Colorado bishops have fought because of "guilt, confusion, a desire to take what they perceive to be 'the high road.' Fear has played a part, too."

At the time of the interview the Colorado Legislature was considering three bills that would change the statute of limitations for sexual abuse crimes against children.

A Senate bill, SB 143, is opposed by the bishops because it would open a two-year window to file civil suits for old claims that are currently barred because the statute of limitations had run out. When the California Legislature opened a similar retroactivity window for one year in 2003, about 800 claims were filed against California dioceses.

Since then efforts have been under way in several states, including Colorado, to extend statutes of limitations for civil liability and to open a window of one or two years in which claims can be filed for old cases now barred by such time limits.

Two House bills pending in Colorado were originally very similar. Both would have eliminated any time limit from now on, both for criminal charges and for civil lawsuits in cases involving sexual abuse against minors.

HB 1088 was subsequently amended so that it addresses only the statute of limitations for criminal cases. HB 1090 was amended to address only the statute of limitations on civil cases. Both have passed in the House and in early March awaited action in the Senate.

On March 3 the Colorado bishops, including Archbishop Chaput, continued to oppose HB 1090 but endorsed HB 1088 as amended.

Timothy Dore, executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, said the bishops were grateful to legislators who amended the bill "for listening to the concerns of the community in revising this legislation to make it viable."

In the interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Archbishop Chaput said the state's bishops are not trying to gloss over the tragedy of clergy sex abuse by opposing bills that would allow currently expired sex abuse cases to be heard in court.

But bishops also have to prevent "the systematic dismantling and pillaging of the Catholic community nationwide" through more settlements, he said.

"I have an obligation --- a serious duty I can't avoid --- both to help the victims and to defend innocent Catholics today from being victimized because of earlier sins in which they played no part," he said.

Although some proposals to modify laws "come from a genuine desire to help victims," there is a "new and peculiar kind of anti-Catholicism at work" in many efforts to change statute of limitation laws, he said.

It involves "angry, disaffected Catholics" and other people "who don't like the church for her witness on abortion or contraception or immigration or the death penalty," he said. "Sexual abuse can become a convenient cover for a lot of unrelated hostility."

The archbishop also criticized lawyers involved in "the litigation industry --- and that's exactly what it has become; a very lucrative revenue-producing industry" that targets private institutions.

Many tort lawyers are lobbying for relaxing statute of limitation laws to keep their industry functioning, even though they say the issue is one of justice, he said.

"But it's very hard to see why it would be 'just' for innocent Catholic families today to have their community crippled because of the actions of evil or sick individuals 25 to 60 years ago," he said.

Lawyers go after private institutions such as the church because it is almost impossible to file civil suits against public institutions such as public schools because of laws granting them virtual immunity, he said.

In Colorado, because of government immunity, an individual cannot file a civil suit against a public institution without the prior consent of the institution, he said.

If the institution consents, the accuser has 180 days to file a formal complaint and damages are capped at $150,000, he said.

"There's no money in suing public schools" although a lot of sexual abuse of minors occurs in public schools, the archbishop said.

Archdiocesan efforts to protect children from sexual abuse extend beyond making the church a safe environment because "two-thirds of the children from practicing Catholic families in Colorado attend public schools," he said. "We have the same obligation to help protect them."

The archdiocese remains committed to its policies to prevent child sex abuse, he said. "Our concern for victims is heartfelt. We want them to come forward."

---CNS