EDITORIAL Toward a healthy church, step by step
Nothing we do now will be
enough, a bishop privately said recently. They want an
execution.
It must feel that way for a lot of Catholic clerics today. The sex
abuse crisis seems relentless, every newspaper and electronic media outlet in
the country is trying to get its fix on the scandal, wondering what went on in
its own territory that remains hidden.
Suspicion runs deep. Priests feel beat up. Catholic laypeople are
embarrassed and angry.
The whole church in the United States aches for Pentecost.
Who, in this circumstance, would not welcome a manifestation of
the Spirit in some spectacular way? Not to put limits on the action of the
Divine, but the way through this crisis will likely come not in some magical
stroke, but in gathering ourselves, in all of our humanity, and moving step by
step, knowing that the journey will take the full measure of our wit and our
prayers.
One of those steps will require the bishops to be open in their
discussions and to begin listening to those who dare speak truth to power
within the church.
Our cover story this issue illustrates that the bishops had access
to some vital and sound information regarding the sex abuse crisis in 1985. How
much was taken seriously by how many is not known. Discussions were held behind
closed doors, and it appears that none of the recommendations was taken
seriously for many years.
As important, perhaps, as the missed opportunity is the clear
message that was sent to at least one of the authors of the report, Dominican
Fr. Tom Doyle, a priest who remains extraordinary in his willingness to buck
the mores of the churchs leadership culture.
Doyle was on the fast track to an important position in the
church, a canonist in the nuncios office in Washington, when he first
encountered the sex abuse crisis.
Doyle and Fr. Michael Peterson and Attorney Ray Mouton -- a canon
lawyer, a priest psychiatrist experienced in dealing with troubled priests and
a civil lawyer familiar with clergy sex abuse cases -- spent months developing
a comprehensive document on how to deal with the then-already mounting crisis.
By all evidence their work was ignored.
Less than a year after the report was compiled, Doyle had lost his
teaching position at The Catholic University of America and was out of his job
at the nunciature. No one ever pronounced a quid-pro-quo, but the clergy
culture understands the message. Doyle was off the career track, ostracized.
His boss, Archbishop Pio Laghi, who was nuncio during the period when the
scandal was exploding but did little if anything to demand accountability,
returned to Rome and was rewarded with a cardinals hat and a top job at a
Vatican congregation.
Thats the culture the U.S. bishops are still up against --
that and their own reluctance to take on this difficult subject and to
scrutinize the clergy culture.
Theyre also up against Vatican presumptions, most recently
stated by Archbishop Julian Herranz, head of the Pontifical Council for the
Interpretation of Legislative Texts (see story Page 7), which makes him the
Vaticans top canon lawyer.
In brief, Herranz, an Opus Dei prelate, views the problem as a
product of an overzealous press, a justice system that does not draw adequate
distinctions between a priests role as church leader and his private
life, money-hungry litigants and, at the bottom of it all, homosexuals.
While there may be hints of truth in some of his comments,
Herranzs points give voice, in the context of this scandal, to a familiar
Roman dislike of and misunderstanding of American institutions and
processes.
Of course, his comments also reflected that attitude and arrogance
that enabled the abuses in the first place and the subsequent cover-up: a
presumption that the clergy are above account, concern primarily for the
reputation of the institution and the priests, no mention of the effect of
abuse on victims, and an insistence that the problem not be used to raise
issues of ecclesiastical reform.
The U.S. bishops have found themselves in a swirl of apologies and
attempts to reach out to those hurt by priest abusers because they have failed
to make difficult choices in the past. This latest round of scandals may have
them on the defensive, but they can begin to redeem their credibility by
ignoring the escape hatches Rome may try to provide and by listening to those
who may yet dare to tell them the truth.
Serious reform is needed. Openness and accountability are needed.
The voices of men and women, lay and religious, single and married, are needed
in their decision-making circles.
No one thing the bishops can do will be enough. But they can begin
placing one correct step in front of the other.
National Catholic Reporter, May 17,
2002
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