Pope John Paul II on Monday summoned U.S. cardinals to the Vatican next week to discuss the sex scandals roiling the Catholic Church–an extraordinary signal of how serious the pontiff now considers the crisis.
The call to Rome of the eight American cardinals who lead archdioceses–including Chicago’s Francis George– amounted to a dramatic departure from the pope’s public reticence on an issue that has shaken the credibility of the church’s American leadership.
Church observers could not name another instance where a pope summoned the American cardinals on such short notice to address a specific issue.
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The Vatican’s announcement followed by just days a lunch meeting between the pope and leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in which they discussed the American church’s handling of priests accused of sexual abuse.
Leading the delegation to the Vatican was the conference president, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, a Chicago native who as head of the diocese of Belleville, Ill., has actively addressed the scandal.
Gregory “relayed to the Holy Father very honestly what the situation is in the American church–that it is a very painful, significant moment for the church,” said Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., the vice president of the conference who also attended the lunch with the pope last Tuesday.
Since the latest sex-abuse scandal erupted with disclosures in Boston that offending priests had been quietly shuttled from parish to parish, John Paul II had made only two brief references to the issue. One came in a single paragraph in his 22-page pre-Easter letter to priests in which he wrote that they are affected by “the sins of some of our brothers” who have succumbed to “the most grievous forms” of evil.
As recently as last week, the pope expressed “fraternal solidarity” with U.S. clergymen over the widening scandal and made clear that he thought it was up to them to clean up the mess created by fellow priests.
His summons on Monday sent a very different signal. “The fact that the Vatican is calling the cardinals together betokens a recognition … that this is a problem affecting the entire church nationally,” said Scott Appleby, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. “And it involves a scandal to the faithful that is very serious indeed and therefore requires a unified and coordinated pastoral response.”
“Calling the cardinals together to talk about something is not extraordinary,” Cardinal George said in an interview Monday night. “What is extraordinary is the moment. … The more we discuss this, the better off we are in general.”
Despite the extraordinary nature of next week’s session, church experts cautioned against predicting immediate, fundamental changes from it.
“There is a danger of having excessively high expectations of what can come from this meeting,” said Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of America, the national Catholic weekly magazine. “Obviously, the pope cannot micromanage the priest personnel policies of every diocese in the U.S. But the cardinals could float ideas with the pope and get his reactions.”
National policy possible
Although the agenda for the meeting has not been finalized, Skylstad said the participants may review the possibility of a national uniform policy on handling sexual abuse by priests. Under the current policy, enforcement is left to the discretion of individual bishops.
Appleby argued that the policy should be “mandatory for bishops, not optional. And the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has to be given the authority to monitor compliance.”
“Up to now, the inconsistency in the implementation of the policies has caused egregious errors, including reassigning priests who were known to have continued to abuse minors in some cases even after psychiatric treatment.”
One explosive point unlikely to be discussed among the cardinals is the future of Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, whose resignation has been demanded by a number of lay Catholics because of his mishandling of the issue.
Leading advocates for victims of abuse by priests were doubtful about the outcome of next week’s meeting.
“We’re surprised and we’re frankly not optimistic,” said David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “These are basically the same men who’ve gotten us into this situation to be begin with. And the problem is so deep-seated and widespread that a one- or two-day sit-down with a dozen men is not going to come up with the answer.”
Clohessy contended that under “the rigid hierarchy–even medieval structure–of the church, every bishop is the lord of his own kingdom, and he can make and break rules with impunity. .l. So even if they say, `Here’s a binding national policy that every bishop must abide by,’ in essence that would be like having speed limits with no police.”
Agenda still unknown
Others cautioned against speculating too much about next week’s meeting until more is known about its details, including what Vatican officials are organizing and conducting the session under the pope’s official leadership.
“As long as you do not know what the agenda is, it’s mostly guesswork,” said Rev. Ladislas Orsy, a professor of canon law at Georgetown University Law School. “Is it something for prevention, is it for working out a new policy … are they calling in experts to give them lectures? We have to wait and see who else is participating.”
George was scheduled to go to Rome next week anyway for a meeting of bishops to discuss English-language translations of the liturgy.
Jim Dwyer, spokesman for the Chicago Archdiocese, said George would leave for Rome on Saturday and return to the U.S. on April 25 but added that George “has not been made privy to the total breadth of the details, so he doesn’t want to characterize the meeting yet.”
Skylstad said that next week’s meeting was not suggested by Gregory. But both Gregory and Skylstad have been asked to return to Rome for the meeting with the cardinals.
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Gregory had come away from last week’s discussions with the impression that the pope viewed the crisis in the U.S. as a local problem. Asked afterward if it was the Vatican’s position that the American bishops handle the problem themselves, Gregory said: “At this point, it is.”
There have been a number of similar sexual abuse scandals in European countries, most notably in the pope’s native Poland, where the bishop of Poznan was forced to step aside last month after revelations about his involvement in the sexual abuse of seminarians.
The U.S. archbishops, including the more elite group of cardinals, were last called to Rome in 1989 to discuss such issues as remarriage for divorced Catholics. But that call did not come nearly as abruptly as in this case. John Paul II also brought the church’s Dutch bishops together to discuss calls for liberalizing church policies.