American cardinals emerged Wednesday from an extraordinary two-day summit at the Vatican lacking consensus on whether to expel priests found guilty of a single instance of sexual abuse against a minor.
The cardinals, summoned by Pope John Paul II to discuss the sex abuse scandal engulfing the Roman Catholic Church, said they would recommend a special process to dismiss any priest who has become “notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors.”
But whether to institute a policy of “zero-tolerance” will not be decided until the biannual meeting of the U.S. bishops to be held this June in Dallas, church officials said.
“There is a growing consensus that it is too great a risk to assign a priest who has abused a child to another ministry,” said Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Yet the cardinals said that in cases that are “not notorious,” it should fall to the local bishop to decide whether such a priest is a threat to children and should be removed.
The final statement fell short of a blanket order for dismissal of all abusive priests, a formal backing for the “one-strike-you’re-out” policy that had been much discussed since the cardinals started arriving in Rome on Sunday.
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Nor did the statement make specific recommendations, which some cardinals had sought, about how to turn offenders over to civil authorities.
Some church observers also had hoped that the cardinals would confess to a sin of letting child abuse occur under their watch and of aiding the perpetrators by relocating guilty priests among parishes.
“I don’t think this meeting was meant to set policy about how the church would deal [with allegations in the future], but it was meant to set a tone, so the bishops could go back and set policy,” said R. Scott Appleby, a historian at the University of Notre Dame. “I am not sure it accomplished that.”
Statement `underwhelming’
He called the statement “underwhelming” and “ambiguous.”
David Clohessy, director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the statement was a disappointment. He said church leaders needed to create a policy that forces leaders in the diocese to address more seriously charges of sexual abuse.
“The cardinals continue with their arbitrary hair-splitting which seeks to minimize the extent of the problem and which obstructs accomplishing policy to prevent this from happening in the future,” Clohessy said.
Many phrases in the cardinals’ final document were crafted from a strong message of regret that Pope John Paul delivered Tuesday at the opening of the summit, which brought together 12 American cardinals, leading bishops and top Vatican officials.
Calling sex abuse of minors a crime and “an appalling sin,” the pontiff declared that “there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young.”
The pope, who spoke at the summit’s opening session Tuesday, had lunch with all participants Wednesday.
The cardinals agreed to send to the Vatican for review a set of national standards they are to craft in June that puts forth “essential elements for policies dealing with the sexual abuse of minors in dioceses and religious institutes.” The pope would have to grant permission to the bishops to impose uniform standards on dioceses.
Review boards discussed
Gregory spoke of the importance of reporting suspected child abusers to civil authorities, and several cardinals have talked in recent days about the need for review boards that examine priest misconduct to be staffed by lay people.
Chicago Cardinal Francis George has called for the option of assigning a rehabilitated priest guilty of only one offense to ministry but said he recognizes such a proposal would be rejected in the current climate.
James Dwyer, spokesman for the archdiocese of Chicago, said it is too early to determine whether Chicago’s policy would change under a national policy.
“What was accomplished in Rome was to set parameters,” Dwyer said. “The details will be worked out at the bishops’ meeting in June.”
Amid a sexual misconduct scandal a decade ago, the Chicago archdiocese established a policy for dealing with priests who are accused of abusing minors. Church leaders often hold it up as a model, though advocates for victims say it is just the best of a sorry lot.
Generally, that process appears to be consistent with the policy outlines the cardinals sketched out Wednesday.
Under the archdiocese of Chicago’s sexual misconduct policy, priests accused of sexually abusing children are immediately removed from ministry. However, a priest eventually can return to a limited ministry.
Many, if not all, U.S. cardinals attending the summit were expected to attend a briefing to present the final communique Wednesday. Reporters packed the Vatican press office under the gilded papal seal, anticipating in particular the appearance of Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston.
Law, under pressure to resign since it was disclosed that he transferred known child abusers, had declined to be interviewed during the summit.
But only Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington; Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, who heads the Vatican Pontifical Council for the Laity; Bishop Gregory; and Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls attended the news conference, which was delayed more than two hours while the bishops revised the texts.
Monsignor Francis Maniscalco, spokesman for the U.S. bishops, said that because the meeting ran more than two hours late, the remaining cardinals had left for other engagements.
“In other words, we talk too much,” McCarrick said.
When asked whether Law was ducking the press, Gregory said he could not attest to the cardinal’s whereabouts. Several cardinals said the subject of Law’s resignation was not broached at the summit.
In their letter to priests, the cardinals offered a less forceful apology than that put forth by the pope a day before. They expressed regret “that episcopal oversight has not been able to preserve the church from this scandal.”
The communique also called on bishops to ask the faithful to join them “in observing a national day of prayer and penance, in reparation for the offenses perpetrated.”
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On another issue troubling the American church after the wave of scandals, the church leaders declared that “a link between celibacy and pedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained.” The group, as expected, reaffirmed priestly celibacy.
George said Wednesday night outside the Vatican press office that the summit participants want to make it easier for bishops to return priests to a lay state. At present, he said, the process can take years.
`Special process’ proposed
The bishops also proposed a special process for dismissing cases that do not involve serial predatory abuse but where the bishop considers the priest a threat to children.
Echoing the pope’s comments, the statement said sexual abuse of minors is “rightly considered a crime by society.”
But it mentioned no specific proposal about reporting all cases to authorities. It also drew a distinction on the age of those who suffered sexual abuse, saying “attention was drawn to the fact that almost all cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true pedophilia.”
Because several participants expressed concern about the state of seminary education — including the number of homosexuals attending seminaries — the bishops proposed a visitation of seminaries and religious houses of formation to examine their admission requirements and how they teach Catholic moral doctrine.
The statement also called on pastors to “reprimand individuals who spread dissent and groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care,” without spelling out the nature of that dissent.
“All participants,” the bishops wrote, “have seen this time as a call to a greater fidelity to the mystery of the church.”