VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
August 26, 2025
By Ed. Condon
Police in Clintonville, Wis., arrested a priest of the Diocese of Madison on Sunday on charges of attempted child sexual abuse.
According to a statement from the police, Fr. Andrew Showers, 37, was arrested in the evening of Aug. 24 after officers “received information” that the priest had “made arrangements to travel to the City of Clintonville and meet with a 14-year-old female to engage in sexual activity.”
Fr. Showers was arrested on charges of child enticement, use of a computer to facilitate a child sexual offense, and attempted second degree sexual assault of a child.
According to a diocesan statement, after the diocese was informed of Showers’s arrest on Monday he was suspended from all ministry while the criminal investigation continues, with which the diocese said it is fully cooperating.
No details have been confirmed regarding how the priest came to make the alleged “arrangements,” or how law enforcement became aware of them.
If those details do emerge amid prosecution, they seem likely to leave the Diocese of Madison with a complicated situation to unravel, since prosecuting an attempted crime of child sexual abuse is very complicated in canon law.
While most Catholics might expect that a priest found to have attempted to have sexual relations with a minor would be laicized as a matter of course — and a necessary part of any credible “zero tolerance” policy — the Church’s law on the issue is not nearly so straightforward.
Indeed, depending on the circumstances, even if Showers is proven to have travelled to Clintonville for the express and specific purposes of sexually abusing a minor, it may not be canonically possible for the diocese to force his laicization at all.
For the time being, Showers’s suspension from public ministry for the duration of the legal process is a certainty.
Almost equally certain is that a canonical process will be opened swiftly, and then paused until civil criminal charges are either prosecuted to conclusion, or dropped before trial.
Any canonical investigation into the details of an alleged delict against a minor would generate records which could be potentially contentious legally. Clerical cases of sexual abuse against minors are, under the norms of Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela, reserved to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Canonically, the bishop who becomes aware of a potential crime of abuse of a minor is to immediately notify the DDF, which assumes full responsibility for the case, though in practice the authority to conduct a full investigation and process — a full canonical trial or expedited extrajudicial process — is often delegated back to the local diocese.
However, the practice remains to suspend canonical proceedings until local criminal trials have concluded, avoiding the issue.
One important reason for this is that local law enforcement and prosecutors often have access to important evidence — and the coercive resources to gather it — unavailable to Church authorities, but crucial to making the best case possible for all sides of the case.
In the case Showers, the details of the allegations could prove crucial to the DDF’s eventual determination of whether a specific canonical crime of abuse has been committed or can be prosecuted, since the priest has not been accused of actually being in sexual contact with a minor.
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The norms of Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela do allow for the prosecution of some “attempted” actions, they are effectively crimes of attempting the impossible — either against the faith or against canon law in matters of the sacraments.
For example, while the canonical crimes of ordination of a woman, or the absolution by a priest of an accomplice in a sexual sin are canonical crimes, in fact neither of these are possible to commit. Ordination of a woman to the priesthood is, according to the Church’s definition of the essential matter for the sacrament, impossible, and the absolution of a sexual accomplice cannot be validly conferred outside the danger of death.
However, SST does not, within its own norms, recognize the crime of attempted sexual abuse of a minor, only the actual commission of the crime. The Code of Canon law also does not allow for the punishment of an attempted crime as if it were the crime itself:
“One who in furtherance of an offense did something or failed to do something but then, involuntarily, did not complete the offense, is not bound by the penalty prescribed for the completed offense, unless the law or a precept provides otherwise,” the Code explains.
Since the specific law in question, SST, does not provide otherwise, it would not likely be legally possible for the Diocese of Madison to press the DDF for the authority to prosecute Showers for the crime of abuse of a minor, even if he is convicted civilly on the charges for which he was arrested.
While the Code of Canon Law allows for “a penance or a penal remedy” to be imposed on someone for attempting to commit a crime, even if the attempt results in public scandal or harm, any penalty imposed still must be “of a lesser kind than that determined for the completed crime.”
No specific penalty is imposed by the law in cases of clerical sexual abuse of a minor, with all cases meant to be punished “according to the gravity of his crime, not excluding dismissal [from the clerical state].”
However, while the DDF routinely imposes the penalty of laicization in cases of clerical sexual abuse of a minor, laicization is regarded as the maximum penalty available under the law — as such, the Code of Canon Law’s provisions on punishing attempted crimes would seem to exclude that outcome for an attempted offense.
Depending on the circumstances of Fr. Showers’s alleged actions, as may eventually come out in court, even the option to prosecute him for the attempted sexual abuse of a minor could be ruled out.
The police statement says that they made an arrest having “received information” that the priest had “made arrangements to travel to the City of Clintonville and meet with a 14 year old female to engage in sexual activity.”
So observers have noted already that this account of events is broad enough to encompass several possible scenarios.
It is possible that Showers (allegedly) made contact with a 14 year old female — presumably online, since he charged with use of a computer for the purposes of child sexual abuse — and engaged in some form of communication leading to an agreement to meet.
In this case, the exact content of the priest’s communications with the minor will be highly relevant. The DDF has a practice of refusing to take cases, even clear cases, of so-called grooming behavior, and insisting that online the actual commission of a crime of sexual abuse falls under the norms of SST, even if the intention to proceed to such a crime appears obvious.
As such, for Showers to face canonical charges of attempted sexual abuse of a minor, the intention to meet for sexual purposes would have to be explicit, as would Showers’s knowledge of the child’s age.
It is also possible, however, that Showers was arrested after being caught out in an online sting, either by law enforcement or by other actors, who posed online as a 14 year old for the purposes of identifying sexual abusers.
If that were the case, the DDF would possibly conclude that even the “attempted” sexual abuse of a minor was not prosecutable, since there was, in fact, no minor to be abused.
On the other hand, the DDF has allowed the prosecution and conviction of some clerics in some cases for the crime of possession of child pornography even when some of the criminally obscene material is animated or generated by AI. Arguably, in a case where a cleric is found to have explicitly made plans to meet a minor for the purposes of sex, the imputability and intention to commit the crime are proven, even if no actual child was involved.
However, even if such an argument were made and accepted by the DDF, the case would almost certainly still not result in a sentence of laicization since, again, an attempted crime cannot be punished with the same severity as a committed crime.
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Of course, this is not to say that even in rejecting a potential case involving Fr. Showers — either involving an attempt to meet a real or purported minor for sexual purposes — the DDF would order his return to ministry.
On the contrary, cases returned by the DDF as not meeting the specific and strict criteria for a crime under the law of SST are usually accompanied by an advisory canonical opinion from the dicastery making clear that a finding of “no crime” under its law does not mean a cleric must be returned to ministry.
Instead, diocesan bishops usually strongly encourage the cleric to voluntarily seek laicization for themselves. Most often, it is made explicitly clear to them that the bishop deems them permanently unsuitable for ministry and, should he refuse, an indefinite standoff is likely to ensure.
While the bishop might attempt to prosecute the priest for a different crime under the Church’s penal law, one not reserved to the DDF, there are no obvious delicts codified in the law which seem likely to result in a punishment of laicization.
While the Code of Canon Law does criminalize a host of other potential sexual acts by clerics, those laws presume the cleric is pursuing a stable and/or public sexual relationship with another adult — attempting marriage with a woman or living in open sexual partnership with someone even after having been warned to desist.
Although the law does provide for laicizing “a cleric who has offended in other ways against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue,” without defining a specific kind of offense, that provision is qualified by the condition that “the offense was committed in public” — with the presumption the cleric is attempting to live a public and ongoing sexual relationship in some way — not the attempt, even the willful attempt, to surreptitiously meet a minor for an illegal encounter.
The Church’s law does include a kind of catch-all provision which allows any behavior not specifically delineated as a crime in the universal penal code or elsewhere to be punished if there is an “external violation of divine or canon law” — but “only when the special gravity of the violation requires it and necessity demands that scandals be prevented or repaired.”
In the kind of case Showers could face, his diocese could come up against a difficult canonical hurdle to clear in seeking potentially his laicization.
The publicity surrounding his arrest and any subsequent trial and conviction would certainly generate a necessity to repair scandal, and — again if he is found to have explicitly sought sex with a child — few would dispute the “special gravity” of the crimes he has been charged with civilly.
But the catch-all-canon limits prosecutions to “external violations” of divine or canon law, not attempted violations, however sincere and proven the intention to commit the crime may be.
While it might seen likely that any cleric seeking sex with a minor could be laicized as a matter of course — and none would doubt the grave sinfulness of his attempt — the reality is that after decades of canonical reforms, some cases still seem to fall outside the situations envisioned by the law.
And while Showers seems unlikely ever to engage in priestly ministry again — unless he is exonerated in dramatic fashion — if the case against him proceeds, whether he can actually be punished canonically for an attempted crime remains to be seen.