Category: Clergy Abuse Crisis

Michael Sean Winters has written an excellent piece on the Baltimore USCCB Bishops’ Conference. He called the entire conference—from DiNardo’s leadership to the proposed reforms—”amateur hour.”

My take on his editorial goes a step further: Pope Francis and the Congregation of Cardinals may have saved the US Bishops from themselves. DiNardo and team never had any intention of changing their ways—they were shamed into it. When called to the carpet, the bishops were ill-equipped to react in any meaningful way.

He says (emphasis mine):

But, when the bishops began discussing the proposals on Nov. 13, it quickly became obvious that the proposals were ill-conceived and would have fallen apart on their own, without any help from Rome. Erecting a national oversight commission, at considerable expense and with additional bureaucracy, to monitor 200 bishops, very few of them likely to have broken their vows of celibacy, didn’t seem very practical once they began discussing it. The proposed commission would report allegations to the nuncio but that happens now and no one had bothered to ask the nuncio if he wanted a commission to help him in his work. The Standards of Conduct seemed poorly framed and vague. The whole thing seemed amateurish.

Ask the nuncio if he wanted help? Let’s face it, the cover-up of child sex crimes is not stopped by layers of bureaucracy—layers formed by the people who created the cover-up in the first place. And the Vatican is certainly not known as the perpetual font of child safety transparency.

These so-called reforms were thrown together as window dressing to appease angry Catholics and stave off impending investigations. What would have happened had the bishops been allowed to implement them?

Fortunately, or not, we will never know.

Read the whole article.

 

UPDATED 5:14 pm:

From the Washington Post:

Instead, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo — the president of the U.S. bishops’ conference — told the group that the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops had asked the bishops not to take action until after a worldwide meeting of church leaders in February.

This is very interesting. The congregation is the group of bishops that has authority over the smaller conferences, such as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. They are all under the authority of the Pope.

I have an opinion on why and how they put the kibosh on the vote:

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was attempting to set some serious precedence: a code of conduct, submission to outside authority for investigations, etc. Would such policies extend worldwide? This could spell trouble for bishops in jurisdictions where there are no scandals because there are no victim-friendly laws.

Plus, the proposed reforms had the distinct possibility of flouting Canon 22:

Can. 22 Civil laws to which the law of the Church yields are to be observed in canon law with the same effects, insofar as they are not contrary to divine law and unless canon law provides otherwise.

**translation: we follow the laws we like, and ignore the ones we don’t

The congregation wasn’t going to wait to find out the U.S. Bishops’ vote tally. They went to the Pope and said, “We’re shutting it down.” He said, “Sure thing. One less hassle for me.”

**************

ORIGINAL POST

There is a lot to be said for being lazy.

I was going to write about the proposed Baltimore bishops’ meeting agenda yesterday, but put this blog post off until this morning. Good thing—because our pal Pope Francis made the whole meeting moot.

From the Washington Post:

In the opening minutes of their meeting, the bishops heard a surprising report: Pope Francis had asked them not to vote on any of their proposals.

The pope does not want U.S. bishops to act to address bishops’ accountability on sexual abuse until he leads a worldwide meeting of church leaders in February, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, told the gathered bishops as the meeting opened Monday morning.

“At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items,” DiNardo said. He said he was “disappointed” by the pope’s directive.

I like the use of the word “directive.” Granted, it was put there by the Post’s writer, but it tells of the gravity. This is not an “ask.” This is an order.

The thinly veiled threat

This quote below by Archbishop Christopher Pierre, the Vatican’s Ambassador to the United States (not the one busted with child pornography) also intrigued me. In it is a thinly veiled threat to any civil law enforcement who dares to try and tell the church how to run its affairs. He seems to be talking about lay review boards—but when you look at the larger scope of his own priest who was busted for porn and was on the lam from TWO federal governments (Canada and the US), only to be “found guilty” by the Vatican—he’s talking about any civil authority:

But then Pierre, a French bishop sent by Francis to Washington in 2016, quoted a French author who said that “whoever pretends to reform the church with the same means to reform temporal society” will “fail.”

Now what?

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich suggested that the bishops continue with their agenda and have a non-binding vote. You can view the proposed agenda here (this links to a wordy and lengthy editorial piece, sorry).

The bishops had planned on discussing things like a code of conduct for themselves (how novel), more lay review boards with real (?) investigative authority, punishing adult relationships (you know, that whole “abuse of power” thing that is forbidden anyway by celibacy), and other stuff.

Me? I think that the bishops believe that Francis swooped in and saved the day. There are a bunch of men with high blood pressure and fatty livers in Baltimore who are breathing huge sighs of relief right now. Instead of fighting over codes of conduct, Cupich and his cronies are putting in their orders for filet mignon and ’10 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac. It’s R&R in Baltimore.

They think they dodged a huge bullet. But they didn’t. Now they have to protect their phoney baloney jobs.

 

 

Spoiler warning: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is taking us for a bunch of rubes.

The bishops are relying upon two things: 1) the public’s lack of institutional memory; and 2) Catholics’ reliance upon the bishop’s artificial moral authority.

#1 Lack of Institutional Memory

Let’s start with #1. The best way to do this is to compare compare scandals: 2002 and 2018.

The 2002 Catholic clergy sex abuse and cover-up scandal was prompted by the Boston Globe Spotlight exposé and subsequent cover-up scandals nationwide. The 2018 meeting is prompted by the Pennsylvania AG report and subsequent AG investigation announcements across the country.

The bishops are in crisis, pure and simple.

Your average 30-year-old reporter was fourteen in 2002. And unless they had a family member who was abused, chances are that the story was nowhere near their radar screen. This is all new to them.

So let’s compare stories.

From Laurie Goodstein’s (who is still on the beat, BTW) June 2002 story on the Dallas meeting in the New York Times:

A day before the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are to meet in Dallas to debate how to respond to the clergy sexual abuse scandal that has devastated the church, another bishop resigned under the shadow of sexual abuse accusations.

Sound familiar? It gets better. Later in the article:

The meeting in Dallas will deal only with the issue of sexual abuse. As a sign of how grave the crisis is considered to be, the bishops have put off discussion of other issues until their next meeting, in the fall.

Now, from the November 9, 2018, Washington Post:

In a highly unusual move, the bishops will put aside almost everything else on their agenda for the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops next week to focus solely on rectifying their policies on abuse.

Or in this case, not so unusual. It’s what they do when they are in freefall.

Now, let’s look at who complained about the policies. From the 2002 New York Times article:

”The more you nuance, the more hazy it gets, and I think the people are saying, give us a clear standard,” Cardinal McCarrick said. ”As I listen to my brother bishops and as I listen to the people, I think they may feel that one act, even if it happened 30 years ago, should disqualify a man for continuing in the ministry. I’m not there yet.”

And now we know why McCarrick wasn’t “there yet.”

From the 2018 Washington Post Article:

This proposal is likely to provoke the most controversy among the bishops. “I think the whole thing of a code of conduct for the bishops to me is unnecessary. We have a code of conduct — it’s called the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s called living a good, holy life,” said Bishop Christopher Coyne of Vermont’s Diocese of Burlington. “This is the life that we’re called to live as bishops. That would be a code of conduct enough.”

After a moment of reflection, Coyne modified his view. “I wish it wasn’t necessary, but it is. Given what has happened in the past and has happened currently, it is.”

Really? No code of conduct for the bishops who have covered up child sexual abuse for decades? It’s not like codes of conduct are foreign to them. Let’s take a look …

Code of Conduct, Diocese of Harrisburg

Code of Conduct, Diocese of Charleston

Code of Conduct, Diocese of Buffalo (ugh)

Code of Conduct, Diocese of Allentown

I could go on, but it would get boring. So I will leave you with the CODES (plural, mind you) for the Diocese of Burlington.

Coyne considers codes of conduct “good for thee, but not for me.” If I were him, I would say, “Lay those rules on me. My burden should be the greatest of all.” His reticence – that “moment of reflection” –  is telling.

#2 Artificial Moral Authority

The bishops will be devoting a full day of the three-day meeting to prayer.

But before it all gets started, the bishops will pray. Their meeting Monday will be chock full of ritual. Mass. Guided prayer and reflection about the grievous effects of sexual abuse. Time for confession.

A full day in prayer and contemplation can be rare for busy bishops, Rogers said. “We’re all very action-oriented people. It’s easy to forget, leading the complex organization of a diocese — all the parishes and schools. This invites them out of the administration of the church, and into why the church is here to begin with.”

They have had plenty of time to pray (sixteen years, in fact, since the 2002 scandal). The bishops have millions of Catholics praying for them.

I don’t recall a single lesson in the New Testament where a wrongdoer, when given a choice between making amends and praying, was told by God, “Hey, I have a great idea. Instead of doing good works for those you have so terribly wronged, why don’t you waste a day and celebrate rituals in secret with your buddies in crime. It’ll be fun.”

What can you do?

Show the bishops you’re not a bunch of rubes. Stop giving. Push back. Join an advocacy group like STOP to change laws and demand accountability. Stand up for those who speak out.

I’ll discuss the bishops’ proposed “schedule” in a later post.