NEW YORK (NY)
National Review
By Ed Condon
November 10, 2018
This weekend, the Catholic bishops of the United States gather in Baltimore ahead of their three-day annual general assembly, which opens Monday. By coincidence, it will be 16 years exactly since their session in 2002, when they met to amend and adopt two measures, now known as the Dallas Charter and the Essential Norms, in response to the last great eruption of the Church’s sex-abuse crisis in the United States.
On November 13, 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, and other luminaries took to the microphone to praise the “significant progress” that had been made. “Thank God we are where we are today,” Law told the bishops as they nodded along. “We’ve got to get past this,” McCarrick said. “We can’t have Dallas 2 and Dallas 3 and Dallas 4.”
Thanks in large measure to “Uncle Ted,” Dallas 2 is very much what the bishops are now facing: a comprehensive and codified response to a national moral crisis of credibility. Many Catholics report that, while they continue to trust their local priest, they consider the episcopate suspect.
Many of the country’s senior prelates are looking forward to Baltimore as the moment when they can begin to move past the scandals of the past few months. Many concede that sacrifices will have to be offered, and publicly. A binding code of conduct for bishops has been circulated, as has a detailed proposal for a new independent commission to investigate accusations against bishops.
The bishops will be desperate to leave Baltimore with a tangible result; votes will be cast and measures adopte
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