BALTIMORE (MD)
The Associated Press
November 13, 2018
By David McFadden and David Crary
A Roman Catholic bishop at a meeting of his U.S. colleagues has suggested a nonbinding vote to convey a sense of their aspirations regarding anti-abuse efforts.
Several Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday urged colleagues at their national meeting to take some sort of action on the clergy sex abuse crisis despite a Vatican order to delay voting on key proposals.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, suggested a nonbinding vote to convey a sense of the bishops’ aspirations regarding anti-abuse efforts.
“We are not branch managers of the Vatican,” he said. “Our people are crying out for some action.”
Bishop George Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, echoed Paprocki’s call, saying parishioners and priests in his diocese are “very, very angry.”
The three-day assembly opened Monday with a surprise announcement by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Vatican, he said, was ordering the bishops to delay votes on two anti-abuse proposals until after a Vatican-convened global meeting on sex abuse in February.
DiNardo indicated there were two principal reasons for the Vatican order: to ensure that steps taken by the U.S. bishops would be in harmony with steps decided at the February meeting, and to provide more time for vetting aspects of the U.S. proposals that might conflict with church law.
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