Tolerance and a Zero in Diocese of Orange

It’s difficult to be bold.

It’s difficult to be wise.

It’s really difficult to be both bold and wise.

That was the challenge facing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange last week after acknowledging that a longtime choir director had been convicted in 1985, when he was a 35-year-old teacher, of having oral sex with a 16-year-old boy.

Faced with the challenge of taking a stand and sticking to it, the diocese fumbled the ball up and down the field.

It learned a few months ago about John Michael Catanzaro’s conviction and did nothing. Then, when the conviction came to public attention, the diocese quickly fired him.

No wisdom, no boldness.

Why do I say that? Because those traits don’t come into play when your policy is zero tolerance, which is how the beleaguered diocese decides sexual-abuse cases. It’s a policy that relegates thinking -- that is, the range of human judgments that might conceivably involve boldness or wisdom or perspective -- to the scrap heap.

School districts around the country touted zero-tolerance policies for students carrying guns and knives, only to be confronted with shades-of-gray cases that exposed them as flawed. They eventually realized that a 10-year-old who finds a knife on the playground and puts it in his pocket is different than being 15 and bringing a knife to school.

Details matter.

Yes, sexual abuse is vastly different than schoolboy behavior, but that doesn’t mean people in authority have to abdicate reasonable thought.

Let me quickly say that, given the Catholic Church’s sorry record over the years (centuries?) regarding sexual abuse, zero tolerance might be the best it can come up with. And let me also hasten to add that had the choir director’s offense occurred last week or last year, or had there been repeat incidents, I’d be demanding his removal.

Nor am I arguing that he shouldn’t have been fired. What nags at me is the apparent refusal by the diocese to apply any standard other than zero tolerance for a long-ago conviction.

The diocese has no evidence that John Michael Catanzaro, now 52, ever repeated his crime. It knows only that he’s been a popular choir director in his 16 years in three county churches.

The argument for firing has persuasiveness. Mary Grant, the head of a watchdog group for abuse victims stemming from the Catholic Church scandals, says it’s irrelevant when his offense occurred.

“The experts tell us the recidivism rate is so high,” she says. “Why take that risk? Are we so desperate for people to work with our kids that we’ll hire convicted child molesters and keep them [working in the church] ... ? I don’t think anyone who ever molests a child should ever work with kids.”

One Orange County expert in child abuse says recidivism is indeed a concern. Research indicates that “sexual attraction to children isn’t something you come in and out of,” says Kathy McCarrell, the executive director of Orange County’s Child Abuse Prevention Center.

I understand all that. But I don’t see any sign that the church carefully weighed these issues. That’s what happens with an inflexible policy. Shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish was morally unacceptable, but the new policy makes it impossible to even consider whether a lone conviction 18 years ago can be forgiven.

In an ideal world, Catanzaro would state his case before the parishioners. They could tell diocesan officials whether they believed he’d changed his life or whether they didn’t want to take the chance.

Catanzaro still might have ended up without a job. But at least the church would have heard from a human being and not hidden behind a policy it apparently doesn’t even believe in.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana

.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.