(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
As a result of the vote by the Conference of Major Superiors of Men in early August, the Church in this country now finds itself in the untenable position of having two substantially different policies on abuse applying to two different groups of priests.
One policy, intended for the country's 30,000 diocesan priests, is the version that was adopted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the hierarchy's tense mid-June meeting in Dallas. The other is the CMSM policy, applying to 15,000 religious order clergy, which the major superiors adopted at their annual meeting in Philadelphia.
In fact, to speak only of two policies may not capture the full reality of the current situation. Since the religious orders are not legally required to follow the new CMSM policy, it seems entirely possible that some of them will go their own way.
Faced with such a muddled and fundamentally inequitable situation, it is hard to see how the Vatican can do anything except try, for both canonical and humanitarian reasons, to set things straight. Indeed, the intervention of the Holy See was expected even before the CMSM acted.
The difference between the bishops' policy and the major superiors' policy boils down to this: Under the bishops' approach, any priest found guilty of sex abuse — past, present, or future — is to be expelled from the ministry and, very likely, from the priesthood itself; by contrast, under the major superiors' approach, such a priest may be allowed to continue in a restricted ministry, though without public pastoral contact.
In a tough speech, Father Canice Connors, O.F.M.Conv., president of the major superiors' group, said the bishops' approach to priests was too harsh. “In paying this purchase price for their moral credibility, the bishops in effect could be perceived to have become one with the voices of the media, unreconciled victims, and a partially informed Catholic public in scapegoating abusers,” said Father Connors, who in the decade past headed the St. Luke's Institute, a treatment center for troubled clergy in suburban Washington, D.C., and was an advisor to the bishops' on sex abuse.
Criticisms of the bishops' policy include its very broad definition of sex abuse (abuse is said to have occurred even in the absence of physical contact or “discernible harmful outcome”) and its automatic penalty of expulsion from ministry even for an elderly priest who may have sinned only once, many years ago, and then repented. The prominent theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., said this opened the door to expelling men not guilty of “heinous crimes” and created an “adversarial relationship” between bishops and priests.
The bishops' policy is under review at the Vatican by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Bishops, the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, and possibly other offices of the Roman Curia. Although little work usually gets done in Rome in [late summer], a decision is expected soon.
In Dallas, it now appears, journalists and abuse victims pressured the bishops into adopting a “zero tolerance” policy that raises serious questions. The action by the major superiors has added to the confusion. It looks as if the Vatican once again will have to step in to save the flustered American Church from itself.
