Nearly two decades after they first publicly confronted the problem of clerical sex abuse, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops face a historic meeting on the issue — this time with their credibility tattered after months of molestation claims and lawsuits.
Revelations in diocese after diocese of the church's indifference toward abuse victims compelled the bishops to propose a national policy on disciplining errant priests.
"For the integrity of the church leadership, this is the most important meeting they've ever had," says Jay P. Dolan, a University of Notre Dame historian. He thinks this gathering far overshadows any other since the nation's bishops began meeting regularly in 1919.
On Wednesday, the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse — the panel drafting the plan — was expected to pore over amendments suggested by their fellow bishops. The committee and some cardinals also were to meet with molestation victims, as the prelates prepare for the opening session of their conference Thursday.
By Friday night, the hundreds of prelates attending the Dallas event hope to end two days of debate by approving the charter. Then, they pray the storm that has raged around them will subside.
Atop the list of issues is zero tolerance for abusers — specifically whether to allow priests who molested one minor in the past, but no more than that, to stay in the clergy under tight restrictions.
Two new polls, one by ABC News and the other released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, each found more than 80 percent of American Catholics reject the idea of giving abusers another chance. Respondents said they want a man removed from the priesthood if found guilty in one case of abusing a young person.
"The world is watching, the Catholic world and non-Catholics as well," says Bishop George Niederauer of Salt Lake City, one of eight prelates on the Ad Hoc Committee.
In many other nations, and at the Vatican, bishops only confer behind closed doors. Here the sessions will be public except for a confidential discussion Thursday afternoon.
Catholic caucuses left and right will be out in force, staging media panels and candlelight vigils and lobbying hard. Civil disobedience at the tightly secured meeting hotel is a possibility. Overall, the atmosphere is in keeping with the sense Catholics have of the church being under siege.
While abuse claims have surfaced continually since the 1980s, it was the news in January that Boston church officials did little more than shuttle serial pedophile John Geoghan from parish to parish that caused the crisis to explode nationwide.
Four bishops have stepped down this year following sexual misconduct accusations, including Bishop J. Kendrick Williams of Lexington, Ky., and Auxiliary Bishop James F. McCarthy of New York, who resigned on Tuesday.
Nearly 250 of the nation's 46,000 priests have resigned or been suspended, victims have filed at least 300 civil lawsuits and district attorneys have weighed criminal charges. Two priests have committed suicide after being accused of abuse and another was shot by an alleged victim.
The problem is not just that clergy molested minors — that happens in other faiths and professions. But many bishops covered up, bumbled and reassigned abusers to new parishes where they abused yet again.
A review of American bishops found leaders of 111 of the nation's 178 mainstream Roman Catholic dioceses allowed priests, religious brothers and lay employees accused of sex abuse to keep working, The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday.
The president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., will open the meeting with a presidential address. Next come talks from lay Catholics including abuse victims — an extraordinary occurrence.
The Ad Hoc Committee released its reform "charter" and a separate list of legal "norms" that require Vatican approval eight days ago, giving bishops a narrow time window to submit amendments.
The proposals include zero tolerance for anyone found guilty of abuse in the future and a two-strikes-you're-out policy for past abusers.
Conservatives believe the bishops must impose even tighter discipline, upholding celibacy and other church teaching and ousting actively gay priests and seminarians.
Liberal activists believe radical reforms like admitting women and married men to the priesthood must be addressed and they say homosexuals should not be scapegoated.
Others, like the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, want to sharpen the policy on the table, by including mechanisms to discipline bishops who fail to comply with charter.
Said SNAP member Mark Vincent Serrano: "We are hoping that Dallas is not the end of this crisis but the beginning of a resolution."