Inside
NCR
This issue is the last before we
begin our summer schedule of publishing every other week. The good news, of
course, is that the staff here, which has been going full tilt since the last
summer break, covering big issues like the Sept. 11 attacks, the ongoing sex
abuse scandal, the continuing violence in the Middle East, as well as all of
the regular coverage you expect in NCR, will get a bit of a breather.
The schedule permits time for vacations, as well as planning for the coming
year.
The downside is that news doesn’t conform to our schedule. It
keeps happening. Our next issue will be dated June 21 and will go to the
printer June 13, just as the much-anticipated bishops’ meeting is getting
underway in Dallas. But you won’t have to wait two more weeks to read
NCR’s coverage of the event. Those with access to the Internet will
be able to get coverage of the meeting, which begins June 13, and running for
the duration of the gathering online at www.natcath.org. As we get
closer to the meeting, we’ll have more information on exactly when to
expect coverage. We’ll post that on the Web site prior to the meeting.
I’ll be at the meeting along with Publisher Tom Fox and
Senior Writer Margot Patterson. Vatican Correspondent John Allen will be
weighing in with reactions and interviews from other parts of the globe.
We have taken the unusual step of
publishing an anonymous article in this issue. The piece, by a priest who
became sexually involved with a 16-year-old youth who later accused the priest
of abuse and received a settlement from a diocese, provides a unique insight
into a young man struggling to grow up in the peculiar ethos of the 1960s
Catholic seminary.
One might conclude that this priest today goes easy on himself in
his essay. There is, in his telling, little voice of the victim. But we thought
it not unfair to print this piece, since NCR historically has provided a
place for the voices of victims and continues to strongly advocate on their
behalf.
If, against the backdrop of the current struggle, the priest
appears to take the most benign view of himself, one cannot dispute that it
was, indeed, his view of things. Nor is it difficult to believe that his would
represent the view and experience of many others who were making their way
toward ordination and sexual maturity at that time.
I think his story also makes a compelling case against the zero
tolerance inclination of some of the bishops who will be meeting in June. I
can’t help but see that tactic as another means of avoiding pastoral
responsibility (see brief on Page 8 and column on Page 21.) The mistake would
be in treating all sexual indiscretions the same. The more difficult judgments
involve those priests who may have been caught up in a single sexual
indiscretion decades earlier, particularly considering they were formed in an
institution where mature discussion of sexuality in any circumstance, much less
sexuality in the priesthood, was so sorely lacking.
If this crisis has shown anything, it is that Catholics have been
incredibly forgiving of sexual sin, while demanding accountability. The tragedy
is that Catholics were not treated as adults and trusted with the embarrassing
information at the beginning. An absolute rule would again deprive ordinary
Catholics of the chance, where appropriate, to forgive and embrace a priest who
has made a mistake and asks their forgiveness. To allow that option would mean
giving lay people authority where they’ve never had it before and
respecting their judgments as never before.
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, June 7,
2002
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