|
Our view: Erie bishop’s openness a good start
GoErie
Transparency, accountability and checks and balances of power are woven into American identity. Not so the Catholic Church, which only began its slow, welcome and necessary pivot to the modern world with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. So it is encouraging news that Bishop Lawrence Persico of the Catholic Diocese of Erie has not only been following abuse-reporting protocols instituted following the emergence of the global clergy child sex abuse scandal in 2002, but is pushing beyond them to improve transparency, as detailed by Erie Times-News reporter Ed Palattella. Bishops and other church officials are now required by the church and the law to immediately report child sex abuse allegations to police and other authorities. Persico is going beyond that to make public the names of disciplined or defrocked clergy. From now on, he will publicize the names of priests who have been dismissed permanently from the priesthood by the pope for disciplinary reasons or removed from active clerical duty for reasons related to serious wrongdoing. Persico began by reporting in the diocese's biweekly newspaper that Samuel B. Slocum, a former Bradford-area priest who was convicted in 2012 of having an inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old boy, had been dismissed. He also named to Palattella three other priests who had been defrocked under his predecessor, Bishop Donald W. Trautman. Persico said, "This whole thing about removing a pastor in the middle of the night — it just causes more wonderment as to what is going on. It is better to be upfront and stop the speculation." He is correct. In a hierarchical institution that relies on ordained clergy to administer the constitutional rites of the faith, the laity have a right to know the standing of their ministers. The church owes its flock that kind of adult conversation, especially given the expectations of this digital age in which so much information can be had in an instant. The child sex abuse scandal is ongoing, including in Pennsylvania where multiple grand jury investigations are underway, including a probe of the Erie diocese. The wrongdoing already unearthed — by journalists here and statewide and through other grand jury proceedings — has broken not just the trust of victims, but also of many of the faithful who abhor both the abuse and cover-ups that put the powerful institution's needs before its most vulnerable charges. Persico's new reporting policy advances reconciliation. He and the church could make an even stronger show of good faith and penitence by dropping opposition to legislative proposals to allow past child sex abuse victims to sue their attackers in court. Victims deserve not just truth, but justice.
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.