EDITORIAL
Now it’s Rome’s turn on sex abuse charter
Many touted the U.S. bishops’
June meeting in Dallas as a watershed gathering, and in many ways it was. The
bishops listened to victims, apologized eloquently for their mishandling of the
crisis, heard strong critiques from laypeople and agreed on a stringent policy
that they hoped would put them on a new footing with the public and the
Catholic community.
The zero-tolerance policy adopted in June purchased some calm from
protests and media criticism, but increasingly Catholics are asking: At what
cost? Doubts about the justice of the Dallas solution, on both substantive and
procedural levels, are multiplying.
Catholics are angry that the zero-tolerance policy has deprived
some congregations of priests they considered long rehabilitated and
trustworthy. Meanwhile new allegations keep arising. Priests increasingly
distrust their bishops and some, accused and removed with no recourse to due
process, are striking back and taking their cases on appeal to Rome.
Things are about to take another turn with the news, reported this
week in NCR (see Page 8), that the Vatican wants a dialogue before it
will approve the U.S. norms. Dallas, it turns out, was one frame in a motion
picture whose conclusion we do not yet know.
So where do we go from here?
While we have spoken at length on this page about structural
reform that is essential if the church is to deal long-term with not only this
crisis but with other deficiencies the crisis has made apparent, a more
immediate concern is the growing number of priests being removed from ministry
because of accusations. The church must be fair to them while at the same time
making sure that such concern does not further undermine the efforts of victims
to bring abuse to light.
The Vatican and much of the canon law community in the United
States have raised issues in this regard, some of which seem justified.
For starters, the description of “sexual abuse,”
borrowed from the Canadian bishops and placed in the Dallas charter, is so
broad it could include a number of actions or statements that might be
inappropriate but hardly criminal and certainly not a basis for permanent
removal from ministry. Under the standard of nonphysical
“interactions,” for example, a priest who recommends the novel
Lolita to a 17-year-old high school senior could be charged with abuse.
(In theory he would have to have done so for motives of sexual gratification
for this to count, but who’s to say?) One could argue for a
“reasonable man” standard, that is, that reasonable people
wouldn’t apply the description in such a way, but that raises the whole
matter of who defines what’s reasonable.
There are cases in which one offense 30 years ago simply
doesn’t seem a just basis for permanently removing a man from ministry.
Canon law has long stressed the principle of proportionality, meaning that the
punishment imposed must fit the crime committed. Mandatory sentencing policies
inevitably gloss over the complexity of individual situations, and leave no
room for mercy or redemption, the very values the church is supposed to
incarnate. It certainly will be much more difficult now for the Catholic church
in the United States to oppose harsh policies in the secular criminal justice
system such as mandatory sentencing, including “three strikes and
you’re out” rules, when we have brought them into our own house.
There is also concern about due process, since some priests
accused under the Dallas norms have been placed on “administrative
leave,” in effect suspended indefinitely without the safeguards envisioned
in canon law being observed. False accusations have been leveled, and one
injustice cannot be corrected with another. Imposing penalties without
respecting the right to a fair defense does exactly that.
Officials in Rome also have difficulty with lay boards whose
duties are ill defined. NCR has made clear that greater lay involvement
-- serious involvement at the level of decision making -- is essential to any
solution to this crisis. At the same time, it is confusing and possibly
detrimental to lay involvement to have boards appointed and operating without
clear mandates. It seems no one has clearly thought through what the national
board will do, short of calling on public opinion to help right the wrongs it
perceives.
Rome also has expressed understandable concern over the matter of
confidentiality and bishops’ relationships with law-enforcement agencies.
While in the past bishops have arguably been complicit in aiding and abetting
criminal behavior, is it wise to go to the other extreme? Should every scrap of
paper a bishop has on a priest be fair game just because someone makes an
accusation, however unsubstantiated it may be? Certainly it is legitimate for
the church to assert some kind of privacy for its personnel records, as other
institutions in society do, turning them over, for example, only where there is
a warrant (which means, at least in theory, that a charge has been determined
to be credible).
It is no secret that more than a few U.S. bishops, including some
who voted for the Dallas norms, are quietly hoping Rome will intervene because
they feel the document, necessary to “stop the bleeding” at the time,
is flawed.
Canon lawyers are almost unanimous in expressing reservations
about the Dallas norms, largely because they abandon in significant ways the
procedural rules laid down in the Code of Canon Law. It’s true that canon
law is heavily weighted in favor of the accused, and perhaps some balancing is
required. But jettisoning due process or embracing mandatory penalties that
leave little room for discretion or mercy is not the answer.
Finally, there is still the unresolved question of accountability
for the bishops themselves. Perhaps if clearer policies are in place to deal
with accused priests, we can get around to the equally pressing question of how
to hold bishops accountable.
The sexual abuse crisis both revealed and aggravated the tragic
estrangement between American Catholics and their leaders. One key to healing
that breach is for bishops to subject themselves to the same scrutiny and the
same disciplinary measures, up to and including removal from ministry, they are
asking of the rest of the Catholic community. This, too, should be part of the
looming dialogue with Rome.
National Catholic Reporter, September 27,
2002
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