Here’s how the Catholic Church can move from vague promises to bold action, former federal official says

By Tom Healey
Star-Ledger
May 05, 2019

https://bit.ly/2WqVzQX

While in some ways a hopeful step, a four-day meeting in Rome earlier this year called by Pope Francis to respond to the sexual abuse crisis that has impacted the lives of countless victims and undermined the moral authority of the Catholic Church was sadly bereft of concrete reform. There is still ample opportunity for the Church to recover from the decades-old scandal and regain the trust of the public, but it will require fundamental reforms in two critical areas that permitted and then covered up those abuses: bishop accountability and Church governance.

To ensure these reforms become reality, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) should name, as soon as possible, twin oversight panels: a Task Force on Recovery to address accountability and a Task Force on Reform to address governance. These task forces should include the participation of laity and clergy and each should be given the necessary funding and resources to fulfill their responsibilities.

Unquestionably, bishops guilty of abusing minors or of negligence in handling abuse cases must be held accountable and punished for their actions. This point was driven home at the Vatican meeting by Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, and a close advisor to Pope Francis, who declared that new structures were needed to report allegations of abuse, investigate them, and remove from positions in the Church any bishops found guilty.

Similar recommendations, and many others aimed at desperately needed Church reform and recovery from the sexual abuse crisis, were announced by the Leadership Roundtable following its two-day Catholic Partnership Summit in Washington, D.C., which brought together Church leaders from around the country, including Cardinals Cupich, Sean O’Malley from the Archdiocese of Boston, and Joseph Tobin from the Archdiocese of Newark.

To give teeth to Cardinal Cupich’s urgent appeal in Rome, a ministerial code of conduct for bishops should be developed that recognizes abuse of power not only against children, but adults. In addition, an independent body should be created with heavy lay participation to encourage anonymous reporting of any Church leader suspected of molestation or participation in a cover-up. If the allegations are credible, that body would conduct a rigorous investigation and, if the charges prove valid, take steps to ensure the leader is appropriately punished at both Church and legal levels.

Bishop accountability can also be advanced by updating and strengthening the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (the “Dallas Charter”), enacted by the USCCB in 2002 after the abuse crisis broke. While this doctrine has undergone several changes over the years, they have been modest in scope and have set a regrettably low bar for compliance by the Catholic Church. Updating the Charter and giving teeth to its compliance audit process would add another layer of responsibility for bishops and thereby help to prevent future acts of abuse.

Changes in Church governance must also occur if the root causes of the sexual abuse crisis are to be addressed. USCCB guidelines around annual financial audits by the dioceses, for example, should be tightened by creating an independent team of experts to oversee and examine the findings of those audits, and to ask tough questions if they spot any deficiencies or have any suspicions. This team should also oversee and examine all compliance audits that emerge from the Dallas Charter, and expand the audit process to include parishes and Catholic schools to ensure the data they submit is accurate.

A substantial case can also be made for rethinking and restructuring how power and responsibilities are apportioned among the dioceses, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Rome. And once that task is complete, steps should be taken to invest in the dioceses -- where bishops now report directly to the Pope -- the authority and ability to make timely decisions that streamline their management and leadership and elevate accountability, transparency and enhanced communications to new levels. This co-responsibility would further provide a much-needed framework of checks, balances and oversight to govern the everyday actions of bishops and other Church leaders, similar to best practices in the corporate world.

Equally compelling is the need to change the process of selecting bishops. Above all, this process should embrace greater transparency, which can be achieved by giving the laity and clergy greater participative roles, and by employing a high quality search procedure similar to that used by universities and major not-for-profit organizations.

Similarly, seminaries can play a major role in fostering change within the Church by rethinking their models of formation for future priests. While seminaries are generally doing a better job today than in the past, they can further improve by revising and updating their curricula with an emphasis on abuse prevention and personal integrity.

It is naïve, of course, to think the foregoing recommendations can be easily enacted. For one thing, they would require approval by the Vatican along with appropriate revisions to the code of Canon Law. But as events of recent years have underscored, it is a labor that can no longer wait.

The concrete proposals for action outlined here should be earnestly taken up and approved at the next meeting of the USCCB in May. Only this way can episcopal leadership convince a deeply disappointed, disillusioned and angry public that’s it’s prepared to replace vague promises with bold steps to rebuild the Roman Catholic Church.