Leaders Humbled by Accusations, Debate

The result of the U.S. bishops’ conference this week wasn’t just a tougher policy on the sexual abuse of minors.

It also produced a humbled group of church leaders.

These are men who operate their dioceses independently and answer only to the Vatican. The cardinals among them are used to being referred to as “your eminence.”

But for two days, the 300 bishops fielded pointed questions from reporters, who outnumbered them nearly 2 to 1, heard tear-producing stories from victims of priestly sexual abuse and absorbed tongue lashings from church supporters whom they invited to speak.

“What are [people] saying about you, the successors to the apostles?” said one of the critics, Scott Appleby, a professor at the University of Notre Dame. “I don’t think the suspense will be broken if we admit that at this particular moment in American history, they are not comparing you to Christ and his apostles.”

In interviews Friday, many bishops said the unrelenting criticism was exactly what their group needed to hear after a half-year of mounting public outrage filtered through news media.

“I approached the conference with a certain amount of dread,” said Jaime Soto, the auxiliary bishop of Orange, which covers Orange County. “Now I feel a certain amount of relief at having been able to engage the victims and the issue together with my fellow bishops. It was anguishing and uplifting.”

Soto’s change of emotions was mirrored by other bishops, who said the conference’s opening day of victim testimony quelled any serious opposition to enacting a “zero-tolerance” policy for abusive priests.

Bishop David E. Foley, from Birmingham, Ala., was moved by the way his colleagues became silent as the abuse victims told their stories.

“And where there is silence,” Foley said, “there is God. God speaks in silence.”

Bishop Edward J. O’Donnell of Lafayette, La., was moved the same way. “You have to be terribly stupid not to feel it.”

O’Donnell, a longtime backer of zero tolerance, said the victims’ speeches also swayed bishops who thought some accusers had come forward for monetary gain or to hurt the church. The prelates “realized that we’ve got a serious problem of our own making. And we had an opportunity to do something about it,” he said.

In the end, Soto said, the events of the conference “made him soberly aware of my own humanity and the need for God’s grace.”

The conference produced a different type of humbling experience for Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. Once the most powerful Catholic leader in the nation, and still the longest-serving American cardinal, Law has been at the epicenter of the church’s crisis since it was revealed in January that he moved a priest from parish to parish despite accusations that the priest had molested 130 boys.

During the bishops’ meeting, in which many bishops scheduled news briefings for reporters, the gray-haired cardinal remained sequestered on the second floor of the Fairmont Hotel.

Law refused all media requests and traveled through the hotel lobby with a burly clergyman at his side. Law apologized in closed session to his fellow bishops for his role in the scandal, but offered only a few insignificant suggestions during the public debate. Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the conference, even gently rebuffed Law in the cardinal’s final attempt to speak during the proceedings on sexual abuse policy. In the interest of time, Law was told, his testimony would not be heard.

Law’s lot probably won’t get much better at the next conference of bishops in November. During that session, a subcommittee of bishops will present ways to hold prelates accountable if they harbor molesting priests.

The conference produced plenty of evidence that Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, while tainted by the abuse scandal at home, remains an influential prelate.

During a single lunch break Friday, for instance, Mahony squeezed in television interviews with CNN, Fox News, CBS and MSNBC. Later, he also helped reporters on deadline by holding a series of news conferences in the hotel’s makeshift television studios and in his hotel suite immediately after the conference’s final vote--a media-friendly gesture unusual for a cardinal or most bishops.

The most damaging allegation against Mahony, as reported by The Times in May, is that he transferred Father Michael Stephen Baker to several parishes after the priest told him in 1986 that he had molested young boys. The cardinal later approved a secret $1.3-million settlement with two men allegedly abused by Baker in the 1990s.

The archdiocese last month hired Sitrick and Co., a high-profile public relations firm, to boost its public image. In addition to two public relations specialists from the archdiocese, Mahony brought two Sitrick executives to Dallas. A diocesan spokesman said the Sitrick executives offered no public relations advice to Mahony during the two-day conference.

In the conference proceedings, Mahony also found himself in the spotlight, forcefully advocating zero tolerance, sharing his experiences of being falsely accused of molestation, and even giving advice on how to speed up the bishops’ lagging debate--which brought applause.

Mahony also pulled off perhaps his biggest feat: getting a laugh out of the weary bishops. When one of his amendments had been misplaced, Mahony, looking bewildered for a moment, said he had given it earlier to someone in the hotel hallway who wore a “staff” member badge.

Mahony said: “I hope it wasn’t room service.”