The Vatican summit of U.S. cardinals on ending the American sex abuse crisis has made many Roman Catholic priests wary that they will be sacrificed in a frenzy to restore trust in the church.
While clergymen remain committed to ousting pedophiles from their ranks, they worry innocent men will be suspended and priests who could be rehabilitated will instead be discarded.
Many also remain deeply concerned about comments from top-ranking prelates about a renewed need to bar homosexuals from the priesthood, regardless of whether they remain celibate. Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit and Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, emerged from the meeting Tuesday saying the issue is among those the church must address.
``I think that priests, having been overprotected in the past, are concerned there may be a tendency to throw them overboard to save the ship,'' said the Rev. Philip Murnion, director of the Pastoral Life Center in New York, which is not affiliated with the New York Archdiocese.
``They want to assure that care be taken that the concerns and rights of all will be protected.''
Christopher Bellitto, a church historian and academic editor of The Paulist Press in New Jersey, said homosexual clergy have told him they are terrified they will be made scapegoats as the scandal drags on.
``There is a real fear among gay priests that they are going to be seen as the fall guys,'' Bellitto said.
American church leaders in Rome have been working on a communique expected to be completed at the close of the two-day summit Wednesday. Advocates for victims of priestly abuse have long complained that bishops have protected abusive clergy at the expense of children.
Pope John Paul II, in an address to the cardinals, said there was no room in the priesthood for clergy who hurt young people. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said Wednesday the prelates had agreed on a ``one-strike-you're-out'' policy on future sex abuse cases involving priests. That means priests who commit sex abuse would be dismissed from the clergy.
But McCarrick said there was still some question about whether such a policy should be applied in old cases that have recently come to light.
After the scandal erupted in Boston in January, bishops nationwide began scouring personnel files for past allegations, suspending dozens of priests and turning over church records to state prosecutors.
The Rev. Robert Bullock, head of the Boston Priests Forum, a group of more than 100 priests formed in response to the crisis, called the ``one-strike'' approach misguided.
``It's so sweeping that it does not seem to me to leave room for the presumption of innocence. Even for priests there's a presumption of innocence,'' Bullock said.
At last week's annual conference of the National Federation of Priests' Councils in Montreal, some of the 300 priests at the event were so worried that they proposed creating a national forum to air their concerns, said the Rev. Robert Silva, the federation president.
``It's frightening to us,'' Silva said.
Removing a man from the priesthood is different from firing them from a regular job, Silva said. Under Catholic tradition, once a man is ordained, the church has a lifelong obligation to him for housing, financial support and other needs. Only the Vatican can remove a priest.
``We are not a corporation, we are not a business and priests are not employees. There is a spiritual relationship which exists between a bishop and his priest,'' Silva said.
Marianne Duddy, executive director of the gay Catholic advocacy group Dignity/USA, said she's been fielding calls from homosexual priests who are so frightened about the prospect of losing their jobs, they can't sleep at night and have sought counseling.
``One guy has been a priest for 28 years,'' Duddy said. ``Where would he go? What would he do? Would he able to leave with any kind of retirement money?''
Estimates of the number of gays among seminarians and the 46,075 Catholic clergy in the United States vary dramatically, from 10 percent to 50 percent. Experts in sexual disorders warn there is no evidence that homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to molest children.
Silva called the idea of weeding out gays ``absolutely absurd.''
``The problem isn't being oriented one way or the other. The problem is whether you can live a celibate life,'' Silva said.
AP-NY-04-24-02 1037EDT