WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Examiner
November 15, 2018
By Becket Adams
Pope Francis takes the cancer of clergy sexual abuse seriously, but not seriously enough to allow the U.S. bishops to move quickly to enact serious and much-needed reforms.
The American bishops appeared stunned this week after it was announced in Baltimore at the start of their annual meeting that the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops had ordered them to cancel a planned vote on measures to address the clerical sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vatican has instructed the U.S. bishops instead to hold off until the Church’s sexual abuse summit in Rome, which doesn’t convene until February 2019. Because what’s the rush?
“We have accepted it with disappointment,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, who heads the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We are not ourselves happy about this. We are working very well to move to action, and we’ll do it. We just have a bump in the road.”
“I remain hopeful that this additional consultation will ultimately improve our response to the crisis we face,” he added, trying his best to put some sort of positive spin on the decision.
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