Bishops Call for Abuse Crackdown

Roman Catholic leaders called Tuesday for unprecedented national safeguards to protect minors from sexual abuse by priests, but stopped short of an across-the-board zero-tolerance policy.

The proposal--intended to stem a sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the church since January--calls for defrocking any priest who commits an act of sexual abuse after the new policy takes effect. A priest with an incident in his past could stay on if he were found to have molested only a single child, had undergone psychological treatment, had been found not to be a pedophile and had the backing of a lay-dominated sexual-abuse committee that heard from both the victim and the priest. The priest’s record would be disclosed to those involved in his new ministry.

Advocates for sexual-abuse victims remained skeptical Tuesday, saying they wanted to see if the nation’s bishops adopt the plan next week. But other critics said the proposal was hard-hitting and comprehensive, and in some cases more than they expected from a church whose American leaders have often reacted defensively.

The document, which contains an unusually candid apology from bishops, was unveiled by the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The full conference meets in Dallas next week.

If approved by at least two-thirds of the 285 bishops, the initiative would eclipse all previous efforts by the church to rein in sexual abuse, a protracted scandal that has escalated into what the church now views as its greatest crisis in modern times.

While past recommendations have been largely general in nature, the new plan calls for specific steps which all 194 U.S. dioceses will be expected--but not technically forced--to take.

The proposal also calls for greater involvement by lay Catholics in developing and carrying out sexual-abuse prevention policies in local dioceses, police background checks of church employees who work with children and youth, and an end to confidentiality agreements with victims unless the victims insist on privacy. Local sexual-abuse advisory committees would also review complaints made against priests. A new national Office for the Protection of Children and Youth would be created to assist local bishops in implementing the plan in their local dioceses--and issue annual public reports tracking a bishop’s compliance.

The most contentious issue was what to do about priests who committed a single act of sexual abuse in the past but have had a flawless record since then. It illustrated tension between the church’s growing recognition that it needs harsher policies and Christian virtues of forgiveness and redemption.

The draft’s apology from bishops--some of whom have outraged rank-and-file Catholics by transferring sexually abusive priests from parish to parish--says:

“We express great sorrow and profound regret for what the Catholic people have had to endure. We are profoundly sorry for the times when we have deepened its pain, by what we have done or by what we have failed to do. We reach out to those who suffer. We apologize to them and offer our help for the future.”

Compliance is voluntary because each diocese reports to the Vatican, not the national bishops group. Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, chairman of the committee that authored the plan, said bishops will send the plan to the Holy See.

The Vatican has issued mixed signals: Pope John Paul II told U.S. cardinals in April that “there is no place in the priesthood or religious life for those who would harm the young.” But after the Rome summit, an Italian Jesuit magazine reviewed in advance by the Vatican said bishops should not refer an abuse allegation to police until the bishop had reached a “moral certainty” that the priest was guilty. The article said that if a priest is reassigned after a molestation incident, his past should not be disclosed.

Father Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America, which has been critical of the bishops’ past responses and recently called for a zero-tolerance policy for abusive priests, praised the recommendations. Bishops have “done a very good job. It’s a tough document,” he said.

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, who in 1985 wrote a report urging the church to address a then-budding sexual-abuse scandal, said the new document’s contrition “is certainly extraordinary.... [but] there have been so many promises made,” that even if one or two bishops continue to treat victims with hostility, “that will blow the bottom out of any credibility they wish to restore.”

Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of Cleveland-based FutureChurch, which calls for married and women priests, said the plan is “a very good beginning.”

“It sounds to me like they’ve done a good job of hearing what the grass-roots Catholics are saying,” she said.

Since the beginning of the year, bishops have been forced to resign, at least 225 of the nation’s 46,000 Catholic priests have been dismissed or quit, and civil suits involving millions of dollars in damages have been filed in courts from coast to coast.

The scandal also prompted a rare meeting at the Vatican between Pope John Paul II and U.S. cardinals and officers of the bishop’s conference.

The draft is subject to amendment in Dallas. “This is not written in stone, nor is it a final judgment,” said committee Chairman Flynn, archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who nonetheless clearly hoped the committee’s draft would survive largely intact.

Flynn said he expects lively debate by bishops in Dallas, particularly over the rule allowing a priest with a past case of sexual abuse to conditionally continue in ministry, which he said was his committee’s “most challenging debate.”

“The committee is well aware that many strongly believe that there should be no such provision,” Flynn said Tuesday. But he said “a large enough minority” of bishops, experts and people in the pew had asked for some “flexibility.”

“We need to believe in the possibility of conversion and we need to believe in the possibility that people can grow, people can turn a corner,” Flynn said. “Psychologically, medically, we would be fools if we were to say that someone cannot grow.”

David Clohessy, national director of the St. Louis-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the compromise was unsatisfactory. “The bishops’ take on zero tolerance seems to be ‘kinda, sorta, maybe, sometimes--but only in the future,’” he said.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said he has already implemented a zero-tolerance policy that covers the past, present and future. “‘Zero tolerance’ means zero tolerance,” Mahony said in an interview..

The president of a conservative Catholic group criticized the exception to zero tolerance. “You can excuse one sexual assault on a child? Maybe they are thinking about some bishops out there,” said Stephen Brady, president of the Petersburg, Ill.-based Roman Catholic Faithful, an orthodox movement within the church with more than 4,500 members.

Flynn defended the proposal’s voluntary nature when it comes to compliance by local bishops.

Flynn said he found it inconceivable that a bishop would refuse to put the plan into effect. “Public disclosure will be sanction enough,” Flynn said in response to a question. “I can’t imagine a bishop who would subject himself to that.”

Times staff writer William Lobdell contributed to this report.