The Very Rev. Aidan Smith, head priest and dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh, was arrested on Feb. 27 after police say he walked out of a Walmart with 27 packs of baseball cards concealed under his clothing and in a cardboard box.
Smith, 42, was charged with receiving stolen property and retail theft. Walmart valued the stolen baseball cards at $1,099.99.
But Feb. 27 wasn't a one-time lapse. Police said Walmart security video shows Smith also taking baseball cards each of the four previous days and leaving without paying. Walmart security told police that Smith was in the store again after having stolen from it in previous days. He kept coming back.
The timeline raises questions that the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has so far declined to answer. According to a message from the Right Rev. Ketlen Solak, bishop of the diocese, Smith had been on administrative leave since late January. That's roughly a month before his arrest at the Economy Borough Walmart.
The diocese did not explain why.
Whatever prompted the leave, it did not prevent Smith from allegedly shoplifting baseball cards on at least five separate occasions. The administrative leave and the alleged theft spree overlapped. Whether anyone in the diocese knew what was happening during that period remains unclear.
Solak's message to cathedral members struck a pastoral tone. She said diocese officials will investigate the situation and follow the church canons that lay out the process for handling clergy misconduct. She also offered this:
"I have spoken with Aidan and assured him of our prayers for him in this difficult time. Please pray for Aidan, for Melanie and their children, for the entire cathedral congregation as we grieve this news, and for everyone involved in this hard situation."
Prayers are fine. But "this hard situation" is a curious way to describe a priest allegedly stealing from a Walmart five days in a row. The passive framing, the language of grief rather than accountability, the gentle pivot to the feelings of the congregation: it all carries the unmistakable scent of institutional self-preservation dressed up as compassion.
Smith's defense lawyer declined to comment.
In the grand scheme of criminal activity, $1,099.99 in baseball cards is not exactly the scandal of the century. No one was hurt. No one's life was endangered. This is retail theft, prosecuted every day across America without making headlines.
But context matters. This isn't a teenager pocketing candy bars. This is the dean of a cathedral, a man whose entire vocation is built on moral authority, allegedly stuffing packs of trading cards under his vestments and walking out the door. Not once, not twice, but on five separate trips. The repetition is what transforms a sad lapse into something harder to explain away.
There's a broader point here that conservatives have been making for years: institutions that preach moral standards must be willing to enforce them, starting with their own. The mainline Protestant denominations have spent the last two decades loudly pronouncing on every social and political issue imaginable, from climate policy to immigration to racial justice. They have positioned themselves as the moral conscience of American public life.
Yet when it comes to basic accountability within their own ranks, the instinct is always the same. Circle the wagons. Deploy therapeutic language. Frame misconduct as a "hard situation" that calls for collective grieving rather than a straightforward failure that calls for straightforward consequences.
Nobody needs to pile on Aidan Smith. If the allegations are true, he's a man in obvious trouble, and his family deserves consideration. Whatever personal crisis may have led a 42-year-old priest to repeatedly shoplift baseball cards from a big-box store, it's not something to celebrate.
But empathy for the individual does not require the rest of us to adopt the diocese's reflex of treating accountability as an afterthought. The canons will be followed, we're told. An investigation will proceed. In the meantime, pray.
The congregants of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral deserve better than a bureaucratic process wrapped in pastoral language. They trusted this man to lead them spiritually. The least the institution owes them is honesty delivered without euphemism.
