Priests who steal are often motivated by resentment, envy, and a desire to cover up for other moral lapses, new analysis has found.
Collection boxes, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St Simon Stock Catholic Church, Kensington, London. Credit: Edwardx/wikimedia. CC BY SA 4.0
Priests who steal are often motivated by resentment, envy, and a desire to cover up for other moral lapses, new analysis has found, adding that isolation and weak oversight can contribute to the rationalization of theft through “moral licensing.”
But the same analysis concluded that a relatively small number of priests have been caught stealing from parishes, and that the priesthood does not seem to attract fraudsters or financial con artists.
A new scholarly article, “Exploring Embezzlement by Catholic Priests in the United States: A Content Analysis of Cases Since 1963,” documented almost 100 instances of stealing by priests, which have sometimes involved hundreds of thousands stolen.
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