Reform-minded Catholics lashed out on Tuesday against the U.S. church's response to the pedophile priests scandal, demanding accountability from bishops who knowingly moved abusive clerics to unsuspecting parishes.
Although about 300 Roman Catholic priests have left American congregations since the sexual abuse scandal erupted last January, only few U.S. bishops have lost their jobs.
"There has been absolutely no process put in place for bishop accountability, basically," said Claire Noonan, a spokeswoman for the Catholic reform advocates group Call to Action.
At the fringes of a national meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Noonan said in an interview that bishops have dodged responsibility for the scandal.
"It's their responsibility to assess people who are entering the priesthood, it's their responsibility to assign them and it's their responsibility to remove them," Noonan said. "If you're going to retain all the power, you have to take blame when you misuse your power."
She said a document before the conference that reviews the bishops' role in protecting children from sexually predatory priests fell short of what was needed.
The document on "episcopal commitment" says bishops will help each other put the church policy against sexual abuse into practice and says that bishops who abuse children will face the same punishment as priests. It does not specify what happens to bishops who knowingly transfer predatory priests.
BOSTON'S CARDINAL LAW
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, whose archdiocese has been battered by the sexual abuse scandal, was active at the bishops' meeting, presiding over a session that framed a statement on war in Iraq.
Court documents showed that Law transferred priests even though they were accused of sexual misconduct.
The president of the bishops' conference, Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Illinois, said at its opening session on Monday the church needed to guard against those "even among the baptized ... who have chosen to exploit the vulnerability of the bishops in this moment to advance their own agendas."
Noonan acknowledged that Gregory might well have been talking about Call to Action or another of the handful of reformist Catholic groups gathered around the meeting's edges.
Call to Action claims 25,000 members across the United States, including lay Catholics, priests and bishops, who advocate the ordination of women, optional celibacy for priests, more focus on social justice teaching and consultation with ordinary Catholics on church decision making.
Another Catholic reform leader, Bridget Mary Meehan, said Gregory had brushed aside discussion of ordaining women as priests "in a very defensive manner" at a time when men have failed to solve the problem of priestly sexual abuse.
"If we had women as equals and partners, women ordained in the Catholic church, the church would not be in this mess, because we would have parents who would minister and who would make sure children are protected," Meehan, president of the Federation of Christian Ministries, said in an interview.
Three members of the group Soulforce, which has been protesting outside the meeting against discrimination against homosexuals in the church, were arrested when they brought their demonstrations inside the hotel where the bishops' conference was held.
The U.S. bishops are set to vote on Wednesday on documents that set out the church response to the pedophile scandal. The document that sets out specific procedures for monitoring and punishment of abusers was revised by the Vatican, and critics allege it has been unacceptably watered down.