CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter
May. 18, 2012
By Joshua J. McElwee
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Though a daylong summit on the clergy sexual abuse crisis in mid-May brought together a wide-range of leading experts on the topic — from those who firmly defend the U.S. bishops’ moves to address the issue to those who sometimes vehemently point to their weaknesses — each seemed to find a key point of resonance.
From lawyers, sociologists, victims’ advocates and a former employee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there was a refrain: While there’s no doubt that abuse reporting and education programs have vastly improved in the 10 years since widespread coverage of sexual abuse by priests rocked the U.S. Catholic church, the system set up by the country’s bishops to address the problem is fundamentally flawed.
Ultimately, said nearly all of the experts at the May 11 event at Jesuit-run Santa Clara University here, the key flaw is in the fact that there is no internal accountability for bishops who do not report abuse or who do not follow the recommendations of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, passed by the bishops’ conference in 2002.
In a keynote address, Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, put it starkly.
“We still do not have a system for bringing bishops to account,” he said. “It is a disgrace that only one bishop (Cardinal [Bernard] Law of Boston) resigned because of his failure to deal with the sexual abuse crisis. The church would be in a much better place today if 30 or more bishops had stood up, acknowledged their mistakes, taken full responsibility, apologized and resigned.
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