June 7, 2002
Some in Hierarchy Say Bishops' Plan on Abuse Must Be Stricter
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
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| Associated Press |
| Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit speaking about abusive priests. |
Several prominent cardinals, archbishops and bishops said yesterday that the new proposals offered by a committee of Roman Catholic bishops to deal with sexual abuse by priests did not go far enough because they failed to remove from the ministry all priests who had ever abused children.
While the committee urged a zero-tolerance policy for new cases of sexual abuse, it would allow bishops the discretion to retain in the ministry a priest who abused a minor once in the past and had repented, received treatment and served with no other apparent problems.
But the church leaders who spoke up today suggested that at their meeting in Dallas next week, the bishops must support a policy of unconditional zero tolerance to reassure the nation's Catholics that there are no priests serving in their parishes who have ever abused a child. There are some signs of resistance to this at the Vatican.
"I think that opinion is tightening up," said Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, a member of the bishops committee that drafted the proposed plan. "Some of the conversations that I have heard seem to indicate that the bishops seem less open than, say, a month ago" to allow these priests who have abused even once to continue working in the ministry, even with supervision.
Cardinals Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington and Adam Maida of Detroit both suggested at separate news conferences that elderly priests who abused minors years ago should be sent to monasteries.
"Put him in an atmosphere where he can't do any harm to anybody, but he can still live out his life as a priest," Cardinal McCarrick said outside his residence yesterday.
Cardinal Maida said on Tuesday that the provision of the draft that gives a second chance to those who have only one accusation against them needs to be revised. "I think that's problematic," Cardinal Maida said. "How do you know one instance? What does that mean? I do think it's cause for confusion, and I believe it has to be more clearly explained or taken out all together."
He added, "I can tell you I know where my heart is in this matter and I just want to see it to be so clean, as clean as it can be in human experience."
Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles is publishing a statement in three Los Angeles newspapers saying, "Our policy exceeds that which will be considered when Bishops from across the country meet in Dallas next week, and I will urge my colleagues at that time to adopt a national policy on sexual abuse as comprehensive as the one in place here: Zero tolerance — past, present and future."
Tod Tamberg, spokesman for Cardinal Mahony, said, "The cardinal wants everybody to know what we're doing, and he felt this was the best way to do it."
Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., and Bishop Joseph A. Galante, coadjutor of Dallas, said they expected to see the guidelines toughened. Both of these bishops also served on the committee that drafted the document.
Bishop Lori said yesterday: "The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People is a work in progress, a snapshot of the bishops at work on a subject of the utmost importance. I fully expect that the draft document will be strengthened following further discussion in Dallas, especially with respect to past offenses."
For nearly two months now, bishops have been indicating that their colleagues appear to be deeply divided over what to do about priests — some of them elderly — who victimized a minor years ago, but since then have served in parishes without other accusations. When the delegation of American cardinals traveled to Rome in April to meet with Vatican officials, the issue of past cases seemed to be a contentious one.
The bishops' instinct as clerics is to protect their priests. Their instinct as Christians is to have faith in repentance. Their decisions have also been complicated because in some churches, parishioners who have been informed of their pastor's previous misconduct have nevertheless stood by him and demanded that their bishops retain him in ministry.
Archbishop Myers said the plan was released to the news media on Tuesday in order to allow bishops to gauge the response from Catholics in their dioceses. Many victims, while pleased by parts of the plan, reacted negatively yesterday to the section of the proposal that allowed leniency toward those believed to have been involved in only one case of abuse.
Bishops across the country are also sending in detailed comments on the draft to the bishops' ad hoc committee on sexual abuse. With those responses in hand, the committee will meet privately next Wednesday, one day before the bishops' meeting begins, to revise the plan, Archbishop Myers said.
He said the plan could be changed to specify that priests with one past instance of misconduct, who have not been found to be pedophiles, could be removed from the ministry, but not from the priesthood. They would be allowed to say Mass in private or in small chapels.
The plan already specifies that priests who are either serial abusers or in whom pedophilia has been diagnosed be defrocked, a punishment more severe than removal from the ministry. The plan specifies the same remedy for a priest who sexually abuses a minor in the future.
In unveiling the draft proposal at a news conference on Thursday, Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis, chairman of the bishops committee, said the committee itself anguished over what to do about the old cases of child abuse. He said "a large enough minority" of bishops, experts and lay people had said they wanted some "flexibility" to judge the future of some priests on an individual basis.
"We need to believe in the possibility of conversion and we need to believe in the possibility that people can grow, people can turn a corner," Archbishop Flynn said. "Psychologically, medically, we would be fools if we were to say that someone cannot grow."
But the Rev. Donald P. Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, said his conversations with Catholic laypeople in recent weeks led him to conclude that they are in no mood for ambiguity. He said the sexual abuse crisis had so eroded the trust of the laity in their bishops that there is likely to be little tolerance for a more nuanced approach that would allow bishops the discretion to judge a past abuser fit for service.
