Cover
story Chaotic Vatican summit produces flawed document
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
Pressures of time and conflicting views left the final
communiqué from last weeks Vatican summit with the American
cardinals regarding clergy sex abuse a flawed document, according to
participants.
Just how flawed is a matter of debate.
Accounts differ on how much significance to attach to language
calling for a tougher line against individuals who spread dissent and
groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care. Insistence on
this point came from Vatican officials, according to sources, and Americans
differ on how hard to push it.
All agree that one key idea was left out of the document: a call
for greater lay involvement in handling sex abuse cases, including the idea of
a national blue-ribbon lay commission for approving standards and
accountability measures. That omission ran contrary to repeated media
statements from cardinals in favor of greater lay involvement.
Eyebrows went up among canon law experts over two recommendations
for special processes to expel an abuser from the priesthood. How
those processes will work and how they will be reconciled with concerns for the
due process rights of accused priests remain to be seen.
The communiqué is divided into two parts, with six
introductory observations that are supposed to reflect the consensus of the
entire group, and six specific recommendations that were voted upon only by the
eight American cardinals who reside in the United States. Those points emerged
largely from an Americans-only meeting on Monday evening, April 22, before the
summit began.
One American participant, who asked to remain anonymous, told
NCR that the language about dissent and ambiguous
pastoral practices was penned by two Vatican officials. They were
Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, prefect of the Congregation for
Clergy, and Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, the No. 2 official at the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Forget it, this participant said. We all thought
it had been dropped from the final communiqué, but with the chaos, it
stayed in.
Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., vice-president of the
U.S. bishops conference and a member of the drafting committee,
acknowledged that the language on dissent came from the Vatican
side.
Cardinal James Francis Stafford, an American who heads the
Vaticans Council for Laity, nevertheless told NCR that he felt the
language on dissent fairly reflected the thinking of the group.
Everyone wanted to reaffirm the teaching of the church that
led to the encyclical Humanae Vitae, its anthropological view of the
human person, Stafford said. There is no doubt that one part of the
current crisis is an ambience of dissent in the church.
Asked for clarification about what sort of dissent or ambiguous
pastoral practices the document has in mind, a spokesperson for the U.S.
bishops told NCR that it refers to any groups which promote
dissent from and a change in the churchs teaching on sexuality.
I presume past actions by the Congregation for the Doctrine
for the Faith would be a good guide, said Msgr. Frank Maniscalco, who
coordinated media relations for the Rome summit.
Yet Skylstad said he does not envision broad new crackdowns on
dissenting theologians or activists. I didnt pick that up at the
meeting, he told NCR. I just got the impression that we need
to be responsible in our presentation of church teaching.
In reconstructing the process that led to the communiqué,
participants agree that the single most important variable was the deadline of
7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24, when a news conference had been called in the
Vatican press office.
A massive contingent of largely American press was on hand,
waiting for the final documents: a letter to American priests from the U.S.
cardinals, plus the communiqué, containing the substantive results of
the meeting. The news conference was to be carried live on CNN. In fact, the
news conference did not begin until shortly before 10:00 p.m., reflecting the
last-minute nature of the work.
The four-person drafting committee was composed of
Castrillón and Bertone for the Vatican, and Skylstad and Cardinal
Theodore McCarrick of Washington for the Americans. Castrillón and
Bertone produced one draft in Italian, while Skylstad and McCarrick produced a
text in English. The idea was to combine the two.
The first version of the communiqué to be circulated among
the rest of the participants was in Italian, which participants described as
sketchy, with certain points from the discussion left out and other
ideas that had not formed a central part of the two-day meeting included.
The rest of the participants then began to react to the Italian
draft at the same time that an English version was prepared. Eventually, the
cardinals found themselves working from an Italian text and three English
texts, none of which was fully accurate.
With the clock ticking and the Vatican press office full of
reporters, the cardinals rushed through a version of the communiqué, the
contents of which seemed a surprise even to them.
Asked by NCR about the failure to mention the laity during
the news conference, McCarrick had to admit puzzlement that the point was
missing, saying it had been present in an earlier version of the document.
One American cardinal told NCR that he did not see the
final version of the communiqué until he returned home and found it on
the Internet.
Given the chaos, some participants have counseled reporters to
focus on the popes April 23 message and the six recommendations from the
Americans at the end of the text, ignoring the rest.
We should have stayed an extra day, one participant
told NCR. With a good nights sleep, we could have ended up
with something clearer. But everyone had flights, and we ended up with a
version that was not fully reflective of our discussions and the
Americans proposals.
Stafford, on the other hand, said he felt that the integrity
of the document was preserved despite the last-minute haste.
It reflects the views of all the participants,
Stafford said.
A further point from the communiqué puzzling some experts
is a call for two new special processes for removing a priest from
the clerical state. The first would apply to a notorious priest
guilty of serial, predatory abuse. The second would handle cases of
priests who are not notorious, but who, in the judgment of a
bishop, pose a threat for the protection of children and young
people.
Given that the Vatican adopted a new set of norms, made public in
December, designed to handle just these kinds of cases, many canon lawyers were
left scratching their heads. Those norms promised expedited treatment, and
centralized the cases in two new tribunals within the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith (NCR, Dec. 14, 2001).
Why was there no mention of the new process for dealing with
precisely the sorts of cases identified by the American cardinals?
Stafford said he saw two differences between the new Vatican norms
and the special process being proposed by the Americans, details of
which should emerge at the meeting of the U.S. bishops in June. The first is
that the special process would be more rapid, since many American cardinals
feel the process for removing a priest is too prolonged.
Second, Stafford said, the special process would lead to a
decision by a diocesan bishop, rather than a church court. The priest would
still have the right of appeal to Rome.
Skylstad said those cardinals with training in canon law cautioned
that any procedure to be adopted by the U.S. bishops in June will have to
respect the due process rights of the accused.
Still, Skylstad said the apparent green light from the Vatican for
a faster, more bishop-controlled process represents progress.
Years ago, this would not have been possible, he
said.
John L. Allen Jr. is NCR Rome correspondent. His e-mail
address is jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, May 10,
2002
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