Delay in Addressing Sexual Abuse Is Another Black Eye for Catholic Church
By Paul Muschick
I may be inviting a plague of locusts on my house by saying this, but the Vatican needs to get its act together on how the Catholic Church will respond to the sex abuse crisis, or get out of the way of lower church leaders who are trying to do something. The church had a chance this week to show a new commitment to dealing with clergy sexual abuse of children. But it blew it. Again. There’s no doubt this time who was to blame — this blunder is on the Vatican. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore from Monday through Wednesday. Its agenda included highly anticipated votes, in the works since September, to address the problem by improving accountability for themselves. Proposals included creating a commission, to include lay experts, that would review complaints against bishops; enacting a code of conduct for bishops; and finalizing how to permanently remove bishops who are found to be abusers. Monday morning, those votes suddenly were called off. The president of the conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, told the gathered bishops that the pope did not want them to act on bishops’ accountability until he convened a worldwide summit of church leaders in February, the Washington Post reported. Some media reports described the delay as an order from the Vatican. Others described it as a request. There’s no difference. A request from the Vatican is the same as an order. So the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops closed its annual conference Wednesday without taking action. The Vatican knew since September what the bishops would be voting on, as that’s when the proposals were drafted by a committee. As recently as Oct. 30, the planned vote was the headline of a news release issued by the bishops conference: “Will address abuse crisis.” The Associated Press reported that DiNardo said the bishops didn’t complete a final draft of their proposed anti-abuse actions until Oct. 30. And the Vatican, given short notice of the final details, wanted to delay the vote because of potential legal complications. Regardless of the reason, the delay is a public relations nightmare the church didn’t need. It just fuels beliefs that the church isn’t taking this issue seriously. It sends the wrong message at a time when the church is under a microscope. DiNardo expressed his disappointment about the delay, as did other bishops, including Bishop Alfred Schlert of Allentown, though both said they had faith that the matter would be addressed. While the bishops didn’t vote during their three-day meeting, they discussed the issues that were scheduled to be voted on. DiNardo said they intend to move forward with those proposals, which also include creating a hotline for reporting cases of sexual abuse and studying national guidelines for publication of names of clergy facing substantiated abuse claims. “I am sure that, under the leadership of Pope Francis, the conversation that the global church will have in February will help us eradicate the evil of sexual abuse from our church,” DiNardo said in his closing remarks Wednesday. “It will make our local efforts more global, and the global perspective will help us here.” If the church wants to address the issue globally, that’s understandable. It is a global problem. While the story in the U.S. has been the Pennsylvania grand jury report in August that revealed accusations of sexual abuse against 301 priests, and on subsequent investigations started by 13 other states, the District of Columbia and federal authorities in Philadelphia, the scandal has touched other countries. Not long ago, the pope accepted the resignation of an Australian archbishop convicted of covering up the sexual abuse of children by a priest and the resignation of a Honduran bishop accused of sexual misconduct with seminarians. In Chile, prosecutors have raided church offices, seized documents and accused church leaders of a cover-up. The responsibility for addressing this mess now lies entirely in the hands of the Vatican and Pope Francis. The pressure is on. They better have a solid plan for what they are going to do in February at the global summit. While American Catholics were watching what would happen in Baltimore this week, Catholics around the world will be watching what happens in Rome in a few months. I now will be watching for locusts. Contact: paul.muschick@mcall.com
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