DENVER (CO)
Crux
November 11, 2018
By John L. Allen Jr.
Two potential turning points loom this week in the Catholic Church’s fight against clerical sexual abuse, one in the “gets it” part of the world and another in the “jury’s still out” zone.
One should come from the fall meeting of the U.S. bishops in Baltimore opening Monday, and the other with the release of a long-awaited new set of anti-abuse guidelines from the powerful Episcopal Conference of Italy, known by its Italian acronym CEI.
In the U.S., the bishops are expected to vote to amend norms adopted at the 2002 meeting in Dallas to place bishops under the same protocols as other clergy when it comes to the “zero tolerance” standard, meaning automatic removal from ministry after a credible charge of abuse.
Though the bishops have already announced their intention to do that in some form, they’ll need to work out exactly how. Under canon law the only superior of a bishop is the pope, not the bishops’ conference, so they’ll have to decide if they want to appeal to Rome to amend their norms, voluntarily submit themselves to a lay review group, or some other mechanism.
The bishops are also expected to take up the thornier matter of how to get to the bottom of the scandals surrounding ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, including who facilitated his rise up the ladder despite concerns over sexual misconduct stretching back at least to the 1990s.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.