Catholic Rift Over Panel Widens

A serious split at the senior level of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church widened Thursday as Cardinal Roger M. Mahony questioned whether bishops should remove the chief overseer they appointed last year to monitor their efforts to prevent sexual abuse by priests.

Earlier this week in an interview, the overseer, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, sharply criticized Mahony and other bishops, comparing unnamed bishops who have opposed his efforts to “La Cosa Nostra.”

Thursday, Mahony, who is one of the most influential members of the Catholic hierarchy, fired back, calling Keating’s statements “off the wall.”

“All I can say is, from the bishops I’ve listened to -- and several called me this morning -- this is the last straw,” Mahony said in an interview. “To make statements such as these -- I don’t know how he can continue to have the support of the bishops. I don’t know how you back up from this.”

The U.S. bishops created the National Review Board, which Keating heads, last June at the height of the sex abuse scandal. The idea was to repair their credibility, which many bishops thought had been badly undermined by the scandal.

The panel of prestigious lay Catholics would reassure the faithful, the bishops hoped, that the hierarchy was carrying out new policies against sexually abusive priests in good faith.

Given the panel’s background, a move against Keating now could risk further damage to the church’s already troubled public image. Almost from the beginning, however, the relationship between Keating and some bishops has been tense. Mahony’s remarks have brought that tension to the surface.

Mahony said he intends to raise the issue of Keating’s job performance next week in St. Louis when the U.S. bishops hold their semiannual meeting.

And at least one member of the review board said Thursday that Keating’s remarks were threatening the panel’s continued ability to do its job.

A spokesman for Keating said Thursday that he stood by his comments, which were made in an interview with The Times.

How many of the more than 350 U.S. bishops share Mahony’s opposition to Keating remains unclear. Several, however, are on record as being critical of the review board. They include Archbishop Alex J. Brunett of Seattle, Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh and New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan, who in January refused to celebrate Mass for the National Review Board when it met in his city.

Mahony said Thursday that the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Most Rev. Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., had not consulted other bishops before appointing Keating.

“It would have been better” had Gregory asked for recommendations and set up a screening committee before making the appointment, Mahony said.

A spokesman in the U.S. bishops office in Washington said Keating serves at the pleasure of Gregory and was not appointed to a specific term.

Gregory was not available for comment Thursday.

Within the review board’s own ranks, Keating’s sometimes outspoken statements have caused concern.

Jane Chiles, a member of the board and the former director of the Kentucky State Catholic Conference, said that several members of the panel held a conference call Thursday to discuss Keating’s recent remarks and that she and some fellow board members have “significant concerns” about them.

“It is extremely unhelpful for the heat to be turned up with this use of rhetoric at a time when we are really launching a number of very significant initiatives to assure accountability on the part of the bishops,” Chiles said.

She added that some bishops also have made inflammatory comments during the past year.

Members of the review board remain committed to the work they are doing and will do whatever it takes to maintain their credibility with the bishops, as well as with the rest of the church, she said.

“I think we have to recognize that Gov. Keating is someone who has been in public office for some time. I think he has become accustomed to using sound bites -- to some extent rather effectively -- but in this case the work we are doing and the issues are way too complicated for sound bites.”

“There’s substantial concern that this kind of comment makes our work almost impossible,” Chiles said.

But others came to Keating’s defense. Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley applauded Keating’s criticism of the bishops. “He apparently has been as frustrated as we have been in our efforts to secure information in possession of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” Cooley said.

In St. Louis, David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that, if anything, Keating has been too restrained in describing the extent of sexual abuse and the past cover-ups by bishops.

Mary Grant, western states director of the group, urged Catholics to redirect the money they would have given the Los Angeles church this week, giving it directly to charities as a protest against Mahony’s behavior.

Father Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America and an authority on American bishops, said, “I personally think that Keating needs to control his vocabulary.” But he also said the dispute proves they “did not appoint a bunch of lap dogs.”

Reese concluded, “He ought to apologize for using the Mafia word and get back to work.”

Mahony has taken a public stance as an outspoken reformer who has sought to oust all sex offenders from the priesthood. As head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, he has been more aggressive than many U.S. bishops in dismissing clergy members.

During the last decade, he quietly removed 17 priests from ministry who had either admitted or had been credibly accused of molesting minors.

But he has also been criticized by victims’ advocates and law enforcement officials for seeking to limit prosecutors’ access to church personnel records. And like many other bishops, he has sought over the years to keep sexual abuse cases out of the public eye, in some cases moving those accused of molestation from one job to another and, during the 1990s, discouraging some alleged victims from reporting their cases to police.

One item at the heart of the dispute between Mahony and Keating is Mahony’s refusal until this week to participate in a national survey commissioned by the review board to determine the number of priests accused or found guilty of sexual abuse in the United States, going as far back as 1950.

The study was required by the charter approved by bishops last year. So far, 134 of the nation’s 195 Catholic dioceses have responded to the survey, in whole or in part, according to Leon A. Panetta, the former White House chief of staff who is a member of the review board.

But California’s diocesan bishops, including Mahony, refused to participate until this week. They argued that the study’s methodology was so seriously flawed that it would not produce valid or credible data. They also said that answering the survey’s questions would require them to violate California’s privacy laws.

Mahony insisted he had not attempted to block the study, but, instead, he had supported the most effective study possible. The $250,000 study commissioned by the review board would not begin to answer questions, Mahony said, estimating that a valid study would cost from $4 million to $6 million.

The current study, being conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, is so flawed that it must be followed by another, Mahony said.

He agreed this week to participate after his office said researchers at John Jay had agreed to make some changes in the study’s protocol.

But “whatever they’ve done isn’t going to overcome what I consider an inadequate and totally incomplete instrument,” Mahony said.

“We are not going to get the comprehensive picture that we need from this study,” he added.

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Times staff writer Julie Tamaki contributed to this report.