A lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has been given a green light from a judge, and if it’s successful, the Church would officially be declared a “public nuisance.”

The paperwork was officially filed more than a year ago — against all the Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania — but only the Pittsburgh lawsuit remains. The matter at hand is whether the Church broke the public nuisance law by not reporter sexual predators that they knew about.

The plaintiffs are not seeking any monetary awards from the suit; instead, they say they want names and information of the alleged abusers to be made public. Attorney Benjamin Sweet insists there’s plenty more that could be revealed, including information about the church’s religious order.

You could argue this would be even more damning to the Church than some monetary reward. At this point, we’re all used to hearing about the Church paying out millions of dollars to victims of abuse that was committed by mostly older, mostly dead priests. But the stain of the label “public nuisance” would be a lot harder to whitewash away.

The Church relies on its reputation and it just keeps getting worse.

(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to John for the link)

