In 2019, the Diocese of Buffalo listed total assets of $66.5 million, including cash, investments and real estate. Its liabilities totaled $37.3 million, which includes the money it paid to abuse victims through the compensation program, leaving its total net assets at $29.2 million.

The diocese may decide its financial survival depends on bankruptcy protection. It has already moved $91 million from its main investment account into the accounts of parishes, schools, cemeteries and other Catholic entities. That was, in part, an effort to shield money in case of clergy sex abuse lawsuits, said Monsignor William J. Gallagher, a retired priest who served on the diocese’s finance council.

But choosing bankruptcy would do nothing to dispel the cover-up culture that has all too often enveloped the church and this diocese. That failure to confront the scandal forthrightly led prominent local Catholics in 2018 to call for Bishop Richard J. Malone to step down.

Avoiding jury trials would once again give the appearance of ducking responsibility for the crimes committed against children, for the lives ruined, by some bad actors who were often allowed to keep their clerical jobs or shuffled from one parish to another.

Chapter 11 proceedings may deny victims their day in court, which to many may be more valuable than any cash award they receive. If things play out that way, they’ll have to take solace in getting whatever financial compensation they are entitled to, knowing that the diocese’s admission of being “bankrupt” will apply to more than its finances.