The Diocese of Oakland: Out of Money and Out of Integrity
In May 2023, Bishop Michael Barber of the Diocese of Oakland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In the following piece, longtime survivor advocate and former Oakland diocesan priest Tim Stier analyzes how the bishops’ decision exemplifies the institution’s moral and spiritual bankruptcy in light of newly released sexual abuse claims. Stier writes that Pentecost is the time for the truth to be revealed, yet bankruptcy “hides the truth and blocks the desperately needed guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
Image courtesy of Bhavishya Goel
I associate bankruptcy with debt relief.
The Diocese of Oakland, overwhelmed with debt, filed for bankruptcy on May 8, 2023. Bishop Michael Barber cited the 330 claims brought against the diocese as the primary reason for this decision. These claims were made by adults who allege—and I believe them—that as children or teenagers under the age of 18, they were sexually abused by either a priest, a religious brother or sister, or a lay employee. The vast majority of these victims were sexually assaulted by priests.
I had hoped that in the Spirit of Jesus, Barber would open the diocesan coffers to the 330 victims of crimes perpetrated by wolves in sheep’s clothing. Barber could have sold the Cathedral complex, which includes—in addition to the Cathedral itself—a sumptuous living space for the bishop and Cathedral clergy as well as an office/chancery space that serves as the diocese’s administrative headquarters. The Cathedral complex cost 191 million dollars to build, and the diocese still owes much of that sum to banks.
Barber also could have removed his mitre and Roman collar and listened to the 330 women and men bringing suits against the diocese. These women and men deserve a hearing from Barber and from all of us. They are our teachers, but we turn a deaf ear to them at our own peril.
Like all bishops, Barber chose the safer and more predictable path: Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He did so after conferring with his team of lawyers. The bankruptcy option enables the diocese to hide all the horrid details of each sordid abuse story. The people of the diocese, whose donations will be paying lawyers’ fees, are shielded from learning the names of the abusers, the location of each crime, and the twisted nature of each of the 330 sexual assaults. Hopefully, down the line, the California attorney general will force all dioceses to release their secret files to the public, which occurred in Illinois and Maryland in 2023, and in Pennsylvania in 2018.
In 2013, Barber was installed as bishop of the Diocese of Oakland, which includes Alameda and Contra Costa counties. He asked the assembled congregation that day, “What are we going to do about our large debt?”
Having more historical memory than he, I wrote Barber a letter supplying some of the dark histories of clergy sexual abuse and the cover-up by four of his predecessors. I urged him to be in solidarity with survivors of abuse; to be transparent on all aspects of the abuse catastrophe; and to hold both perpetrators and his predecessor bishops accountable, especially Bishop Emeritus John Cummins, who aided and abetted abuse throughout his decadeslong tenure as bishop. I explained that Gospel humility demanded such an approach to both the debt crisis and the moral and human catastrophe that brought the diocese to this breaking point.
Barber didn’t seem to like or take my advice. Over the last decade, he has chosen distance from victims over solidarity with them, secrets over transparency, and praise and honors for Cummins over accountability. Last year, Cummins’ name was placed on a new building at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland; this honor came after I had sent Barber, the leaders of Bishop O’Dowd, and 60 priest pastors a detailed account of Cummins’ repeated actions to protect the reputation of the church over the protection of children. It’s hard to miss the irony of honoring Cummins at a high school that educates students in the same age range as the majority of minors abused by priests. The thought conjures up the image of the wolf guarding the hen house.
Recently, I learned the names of approximately 40 priests, never before implicated in the sex abuse crisis, in this recent round of lawsuits. I knew many of these men, and several are still alive and active in ministry. I was flabbergasted by the number of newly named perpetrators and further shocked by these revelations. Even Oakland’s first bishop, Floyd Lawrence Begin, was on the list!
The more I thought about Barber’s decision to file for bankruptcy, and how cowardly and unfair this action is for victims, the more I realized that the appalling level of moral and spiritual bankruptcy passes for business as usual in the Diocese of Oakland. The staggering number of Oakland priest perpetrators reveals the enormous scale of the collapse. A SNAP leader friend of mine who does statistical analysis found that since 1962, when the Diocese of Oakland was formed, until the present, 19 percent of diocesan priests have sexually abused minors. Nineteen percent! This number belies Barber’s belief that it’s just a few bad apples, most of whom are allegedly in the distant past—not so!
Nineteen percent reveals a rotten barrel, a failed system, a broken-down structure that must never be allowed to return to business as usual.
With very few exceptions, the men who run the Diocese of Oakland and our parishes are wolves in sheep’s clothing. It’s not just the perpetrators but all priests who never talk about the crisis in their parishes and schools. Jesus’ harshest words were directed against anyone who sins against children, which includes those who remain quiet or look the other way while children are being devoured. To emphasize his point, Jesus said that they would be better off with a millstone placed around their necks and thrown into the sea than to harm a child.
Barber’s choice to declare bankruptcy is yet one more example of a Catholic bishop avoiding transparency, accountability, and solidarity. Barber and company, blinded by denial and minimization, continue to willfully misunderstand the root of the problem, that is, the all-male, secretive, rigidly hierarchical, pseudo-celibate, hypocrisy-riddled pack of wolves who run the Roman Catholic Church. Barber’s decision to file for bankruptcy exposes the deeper and more dangerous spiritual bankruptcy of 21st-century Catholicism.
Pentecost is a time in which believers celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, whose presence within us and among us keeps Jesus’ presence and teaching alive. Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth. Bankruptcy hides the truth and blocks the desperately needed guidance of the Holy Spirit. Only the full, unvarnished truth will set us free.
The Diocese of Oakland is reaping what it sowed and, unfortunately, continues to sow. We all need to listen to our teachers—the survivors of sexual abuse—and never ever return to business as usual. Until then, we don’t have a prayer; we have a CATASTROPHE: moral, spiritual, and financial.
This piece was republished with permission from Tim Stier.
A native of Oakland, California, Tim Stier was ordained a priest for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland in 1979. For 25 years, he served in five parishes including 12 years as a pastor. In March 2005, after prayerful discernment and years of working for church reform, he felt called to choose exile from active parish ministry to advocate for groups within the Church who have been marginalized and unjustly treated. Among these are women, sexual abuse survivors, and LGBTQ+ persons. In 2010, he began a weekly protest outside the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland to stand in public solidarity with the excluded. In his book, Crying Out For Justice Full-Throated and Unsparingly; A Parish Priest’s Story, he reveals the depths of the crisis in the Church from an insider’s perspective and offers a way forward.
