The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said yesterday he is confident that his fellow bishops will vote in Dallas next month for a "one strike, you're out" policy toward priests who commit child sexual abuse, and that the Vatican will support their decision.
"I don't see how we could not adopt it," Bishop Wilton D. Gregory said. "To listen to our people, it's clear this is what they expect of us. This would be kind of the minimum step in restoring their confidence in our leadership."
Gregory, who heads the diocese of Belleville, Ill., dismissed reports that senior Vatican officials appear to oppose some steps that the nearly 300 active U.S. bishops may take at their June 13-15 meeting in Dallas, such as requiring Catholic clergy to report any allegation of sexual abuse to civil authorities.
"Does everyone in Rome understand all the fine points of American civil law? No. But do they trust the U.S. bishops? Yes. I have great confidence that we will find the support we need," he said in a telephone interview.
Gregory's comments amounted to the clearest indication yet of the bishops' internal deliberations and their emerging response to the sex abuse scandal that has shaken the Roman Catholic Church this year. He spoke at a critical juncture, as a committee of bishops and church advisers met in Washington to draw up proposals for the Dallas meeting.
Gregory said he expected to receive the proposals from the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse, headed by Bishop Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul and Minneapolis, within a few days. He said he would review them with other officers of the national bishops' conference before setting the final agenda for the meeting.
After discussions with Pope John Paul II in Rome last month, Gregory and 12 of America's 13 cardinals recommended that the bishops' conference adopt a mandatory, nationwide policy on how Catholic dioceses should deal with allegations of sexual abuse. But it was unclear from the Rome meeting whether the policy would require the permanent removal from ministry of any priest who has committed sexual misconduct with a minor.
Gregory said yesterday that "a number of bishops don't like the term 'one strike' or 'zero tolerance,' because they think it's an inaccurate way of saying it." Instead, he said, the bishops' conference may "use our own language to say the same thing: A person who is found to have committed sexual abuse against a minor will never be assigned to public ministry again, will never have any office in the church again."
Gregory acknowledged that there is still disagreement about such a rule, with some church leaders arguing that it should apply only to future cases. "Clearly the past cases are the thorny issue for bishops," he said. "If I could project, I think that some bishops -- though not this bishop -- are thinking, 'What if a guy is 80 years old, he's already retired, what do you do with him?' "
His own position, Gregory continued, is that the policy must apply across the board.
"I think for the credibility of the church, if a man has harmed a child, he's not going to ever be allowed to function as a priest again. I don't care about the circumstances, I don't care how long ago it happened."
"The reason I feel strongly about this is, I think about the people who've been hurt. If it's been 20 years for the priest, it's been 20 years for someone who's walked around for all that time with pain in their heart," he said.
Gregory added that he doubts there are many known sex offenders still functioning as priests across the country. "The number of dioceses that have placed men on administrative leave in recent weeks is an indication that the cupboard is pretty bare," he said. "Any bishop who is trying to hold on to one or two, for whatever reason, is going to find himself pretty isolated."
Still, Gregory said he doubted that the bishops would vote in Dallas to require each diocese to make public how many of its priests have been accused of abuse, how many have been removed, and how much money it has paid to settle lawsuits.
"I think we have to be committed to transparency," he said. "In my diocese, two weeks ago I gave a complete financial accounting for what this has cost us -- legal fees, settlements, counseling for victims, everything going back 10 years, and I did that because people have a right to know. It's their money. But not every bishop is there."
Gregory added that he hopes the Dallas meeting "will be a pivotal moment" for the church, but "there's much more that we've got to address, and Dallas can't do everything."
A prominent church lawyer in Rome, the Rev. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, published an article last weekend saying a bishop should not refer an abuse allegation to police until he has followed the church's internal legal procedures and reached "moral certitude" that the priest is guilty.
Gregory said, however, that "Ghirlanda was speaking as a canonist" -- an expert in church law -- and that "the principles that govern canon law do not apply in American civil law." Most of the 50 states require all clergy members to report any allegation of child abuse to civil authorities.