WESTON, Massachusetts - Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said the Roman Catholic church hierarchy should embrace reform groups, and encouraged Catholics to press for change with their checkbooks and through church attendance.
In his first speech on the clergy sexual abuse scandal since being named head of a panel reviewing church policy, Keating on Friday said the church can benefit from debate with lay groups, reformers, critics and others.
"Just because you wear a red hat does not necessarily mean that you have the knowledge of what is going on, and you need the input and advice from a wide variety of people," he said.
Voice of the Faithful, a group of lay Catholics, has been barred from meeting in some parishes, and the Boston Archdiocese has refused to accept its contributions. Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna Morrissey said "dialogue with the group remains open."
"I just do not understand what is to be feared from conversation, what is threatened by dialogue and discussion," said Keating, who spoke at a conference on women and the church at Regis College, a Catholic women's school in Weston, about 15 miles outside of Boston.
The national scandal over clergy sex abuse of children erupted in Boston in January, when court documents revealed that church officials here shuttled former priest John Geoghan between parishes despite multiple allegations against him.
The crisis mushroomed nationally while documents made public through dozens of other civil lawsuits revealed a pattern in the Boston Archdiocese of failure to remove accused priests.
Keating, a lifelong Catholic, was appointed in June to head the National Review Board on Clergy Sexual Abuse, a panel assembled by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to evaluate how dioceses handle allegations of abuse and discipline offenders.
The panel does not have a member from Boston, but Keating said he hopes the next opening goes to someone from the area.
This summer, Keating came under fire from The Pilot, the official newspaper of the archdiocese, which chastised him in an editorial for his comment that Catholics who lose confidence in their local bishop should attend Mass elsewhere and withhold contributions.
The Pilot and Keating's own archbishop, Eusebius Beltran, accused him of telling Catholics "to commit a mortal sin" by not attending Massachusetts.
Keating called the accusation "utterly, irredeemably false," saying he was not urging Catholics to stop going to church altogether.
"The only power we have as Catholic laity is filling up the pews and writing checks," he said. "If we don't fill up the pews and we don't write checks, things change."
Still, Keating was generally complimentary Friday of Cardinal Bernard Law, saying he was impressed with the Boston archdiocese's response to the crisis.
"I don't have the knowledge of all the facts associated with Cardinal Law," he said. "This is a man who has exercised marvelous pastoral care from the time he was a very young priest, and he is a good and decent man. What's happened on his watch is awful."