Cover
story Church in Crisis -- Commentary Bishops haste produces un-Catholic
policy
By TOM BEAUDOIN
The American Catholic bishops were under enormous pressure in
Dallas to show that they heard the victims of sexual abuse. They are to be
applauded for their openness to learning from victims, from Catholic thinkers,
and from the deep disappointment of Catholics who are enraged about this
Catholic Watergate.
Unfortunately, the bishops settled on a terribly regrettable
policy. Zero tolerance was born of a need for image recuperation and from an
authentic attempt to reply to popular outrage. But it is a deeply flawed and
even un-Catholic policy.
Zero tolerance is a weasel phrase. What does it really mean? What
person of good will, after all, knowingly tolerates child abuse or pedophilia?
Though it has the ring of absolute finality, the phrase is not ultimately meant
to signal anything coherent. Instead, it is designed for public consumption, to
portray bishops as tough on abusers. Zero tolerance is now the
brand du jour for institutions caught in scandal, from corporations to
sports teams to churches. The unreflective zeal with which the phrase is used
is the clearest clue to its slippery denotation.
Zero tolerance is not zero after all. If by zero
tolerance is meant no abusers in the priesthood, then those found guilty should
be defrocked. But the bishops policy allows convicted abusers to remain
priests, though removed from active ministry. Everyday lay Catholics will still
have to support these priests directly or indirectly for the remainder of their
lives -- which in some cases will be many decades -- unless the bishops have a
plan to establish a separate fund to support the livelihood of these priests.
If a priest is still authentically a priest, he should be allowed to work
toward returning to ministry. If he is not authentically a priest, he should be
defrocked.
Zero tolerance contradicts the countercultural tradition of the
U.S. bishops social teachings. In their stands for peace and economic
justice, the bishops have been willing to offend mainstream Americans,
including Catholics, in the name of a calm, rational fidelity to human dignity.
But the zero-tolerance policy is at least in part based on an attitude of
revenge toward offenders, a furious desire on the part of many Catholics to see
guilty priests humiliated. Revenge, though, is never a morally suitable
motivation -- as official Catholic teaching on the death penalty holds.
Zero tolerance is a blunt object of punishment. All abuse is an
offense against human dignity, but just as the severity of sins differs in
traditional Catholic teaching, and the severity of punishment in civil law
varies according to many factors, not all abuses are the same. In our
overheated atmosphere, this is difficult for many to admit. A priest who
briefly exposed himself to a teenager has not committed the same act as a
priest who raped a minor. The bishops policy does not take sufficiently
into account the specific circumstances of each case: the suffering of the
victim(s), the rehabilitation of the priest, the context and nature of the
offending or abusive actions.
Zero tolerance creates a class of priests who must live the rest
of their lives in limbo. These priests, if they retire to monasteries, will
then have to be supported by religious orders, whose quarters will now become
permanent guesthouses for this new class of priests. What will be the
psychological cost to priests, and the economic cost to the church, of this
official banishment and ostracism?
With more time for deliberation, the bishops would likely have
taken seriously these flaws in their policy. But they acted in haste.
Like Enron and Worldcom, my churchs leaders hid their
deficits for years, betraying the everyday faithful. In their rush to burnish
their image in Dallas, the bishops chose not justice, but a slogan, with all
the precision of a billy club.
With their policy, the bishops have presented abusers as a
sacrificial lamb to angry Catholics. In so doing, the bishops perhaps hope to
escape through a side door as American Catholics and the media revel fix our
eyes on the glossy logo of zero tolerance. With this policy, the hard work of
real accountability in the church has been traded for a bag of silver media
reviews.
Tom Beaudoin is visiting assistant professor of theology and
religious education at Boston College.
National Catholic Reporter, August 2,
2002
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