UNITED STATES
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By David G. Clohessy
It was a hot June in a Midwestern city, during a meeting of 250 U.S. Catholic bishops, that the new, unprecedented church panel was announced. It was hailed as a ground-breaking move that would herald a new era in the church’s continuing clergy child sex abuse and cover-up scandal. More specifically, the panel was to address whether bishops were — or were not — following church abuse policies.
I’m not talking about St. Louis in 2015, when the church hierarchy’s latest shiny new reform plan was a new tribunal to consider whether bishops endangered kids by concealing crimes.
I’m talking about Dallas in 2002, when the church hierarchy’s latest shiny new reform was the creation of a National Review Board. The NRB was to be a watchdog. It was to ride herd on recalcitrant prelates. It was to be a mechanism that would ensure accountability.
But quickly, it became — and remains — a lapdog, not a watchdog. Our fear, of course, is that the new papal tribunal will do so as well.
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.