WASHINGTON (D.C.)
Washington Post
November 15, 2018
By Bill McCormick
On Sunday, the Vatican ordered U.S. bishops to stop considering proposals about how to respond when bishops are accused of sexual abuses. Those proposals were on this week’s agenda at the fall gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore.
Why were the bishops considering action now? For several reasons. This summer, the Vatican removed retired Archbishop Theodore McCarrick from ministry after finding that allegations that he had sexually abused young men were credible. In August, the Pennsylvania attorney general released a grand jury report revealing extensive clerical sex abuse in the state, prompting several other state attorneys general to investigate church abuse records. The resulting public outcry put tremendous pressure on the bishops to act decisively.
What were the bishops going to do?
On Monday, the bishops planned to address a key gap in their response to clerical sex abuse: how to deal with allegations against bishops. The U.S. Roman Catholic Church had, in 2002, released a directive on best practices for reporting and responding to sex abuse, called the “Dallas Charter.” But it did not include rules for bishops.
The bishops’ Baltimore agenda, according to the Jesuit magazine America, included:
Approving new “Standards of Episcopal Conduct” for bishops, the creation of a new commission to handle allegations of abuse against bishops, and new protocols for bishops who are removed or who resign from office due to sexual misconduct with adults or minors.
Why did the Vatican halt the vote?
The many possible reasons all arise from the complicated dynamics of Catholic Church governance. For one, the church has come to see clerical sex abuse as a global issue, not a problem isolated in a few countries such as Ireland or the United States. The church has thus increasingly seen the need for a global solution. The Vatican might be hoping that a more united front will emerge from a February 2019 meeting of bishops that it has called on this issue.
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