The Vatican and a team of U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have
agreed on revisions to the American "zero-tolerance" policy on sexual
abuse that will settle Vatican concerns about protecting the rights of accused
priests, church officials announced Wednesday.
The announcement, coming after just two days of closed-door meetings at the
Vatican, caught many American Catholic leaders by surprise.
Details of the revisions were not made public or immediately given either to
the U.S. bishops as a whole or to Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma, chairman of
the bishops National Review Board on sexual abuse, which is charged with
overseeing the implementation of the U.S. policy.
Instead, the four U.S. bishops who negotiated the revisions with four Vatican
officials plan to present them to the full U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
for approval when the group meets in Washington for a regularly scheduled
meeting Nov. 11. The U.S. bishops approved the zero-tolerance policy, formally
known as the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, at a
special meeting in Dallas in June.
Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, one of the negotiators, sought to reassure
American Catholics that the "goals" of protecting minors and
punishing abusive priests remain in place. At the same time, he said in a
written statement released in Rome, the revisions would meet the Vatican's
concerns that the U.S. policy as originally written could abridge the rights of
priests that are set out in the church's canon law.
"We believe that the goals of the Dallas decision, i.e. to protect minors
and to reach out to victims, have been preserved and that the Dallas documents
have been completed in elaborating normative procedures that respect the rights
of priests who have been accused," George's statement said.
A confidential fax announcing the agreement was dispatched Tuesday to all U.S.
bishops by Bishop Wilton T. Gregory, president of the bishops conference. A
bishop who received the fax said it contained no details but characterized its
tone as "upbeat."
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman in the U.S. bishops office in Washington,
said there had been no drastic rewriting of the Dallas policy. The fact that
the joint commission completed its work in just two days meant that "there
was not a lot of work that had to be done," Walsh said. "They were
tweaking the norms."
But the speed of the negotiations and the secrecy surrounding them are causing
advocates for victims of sexual abuse to worry. The fact that the eight-member
commission had finished its work in just two days of Vatican meetings was
"not a good sign," said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of
Those Abused by Priests.
"We obviously argued that the U.S. bishops should fight tooth and nail to
preserve the Dallas charter, and it was pretty clear the Vatican wanted it
weakened," Clohessy said. "We're just pessimistic."
"It's creative and desperate spin-doctoring going on to define these
changes as tweaking rather than substantive changes," Clohessy said.
"I'd love to be proven wrong."
Others cautioned against reading too much into the speed of the talks. In
Chicago, Father Andrew Greeley, a Catholic columnist and author who early on
was an outspoken critic of the bishops' handling of the sexual abuse crisis,
said he took Cardinal George at his word that the policy had not been greatly
weakened.
"They couldn't have had too much to argue about," Greeley said.
"I don't see Francis George backing off from the basic premises."
U.S. bishops approved their zero-tolerance policy in the midst of a sexual
abuse scandal that has engulfed the church in the United States. As many as 300
priests have either been removed from ministry or have retired early after
accusations that they had sexually abused minors. Dozens nationwide are now
facing prosecution.
The crisis has cost dioceses millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements
with the victims. At the Dallas meeting, bishops said the accusations that the
church hierarchy had failed to protect children from sexual predators — often
moving accused priests from one diocese to another — had eroded their moral
credibility. Many bishops and priests have called the crisis the worst ever to
face the church in America.
The Dallas charter said that any "credible" accusation of sexual
abuse of a minor — past, present or future — by any priest, deacon or other
church worker would result in the accused person being immediately removed from
the ministry.
If the accusation proves groundless, the accused person can be restored to the
ministry. But any church worker who admits to abuse or is found guilty is to be
permanently removed from ministry. Priests would also be subject to being
ousted from the priesthood, known in the church as being removed from the
clerical state.
U.S. bishops have been free to voluntarily implement the policy, and several,
including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in Los Angeles and Bishop Tod D. Brown in
Orange County, have said they would do so. But in order to make the policy
mandatory for all dioceses, it must be approved by the Vatican.
Vatican officials, along with some leading U.S. canon lawyers, raised questions
from the start. The Vatican said it was concerned that the due process rights
of priests were being abridged. Officials also questioned the U.S. bishops'
stated intention to remove priests from the ministry, even those who had led an
exemplary life for many years after a decades-old transgression.
In addition, Vatican officials objected to the expanded role of U.S. lay
Catholics envisioned by the Dallas charter. The charter created sexual abuse
review committees in all dioceses and said lay Catholics should hold a majority
on those panels. The committees were to advise bishops on how to handle accused
priests and oversee local sexual abuse prevention policies. The Vatican wanted
assurances that the "proper role" of lay-dominated boards did not
infringe on the authority of a bishop.
A third problem, in the view of Vatican officials, was the U.S. policy's broad
definition of what constitutes sexual abuse, one that goes beyond the
definition in many states' civil laws.
Earlier this month, Vatican officials said they could not approve the policy as
written. The Vatican proposed the joint U.S.-Vatican commission and said it
would bring the U.S. policy into conformity with the canon law that governs the
church worldwide.
Nonetheless, the Vatican took pains at the time to emphasize that it was in
"full solidarity" with the efforts by the American church to end
sexual abuse of minors, to come to the aid of victims and their families, and
to discipline priests, deacons and other church workers. The Vatican called the
sexual abuse of minors "particularly abhorrent."