Church in
Crisis
Commission to review norms
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Chicago
Despite efforts by the U.S. bishops to avoid an air of crisis, the
long-awaited response from Rome to their Dallas sex abuse norms has generated
divisions that may prove difficult to resolve, both inside the Vatican and in
the court of American Catholic opinion.
The response came in an Oct. 14 letter from Cardinal Giovanni
Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, to Bishop Wilton Gregory,
president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, which said that changes would
be necessary before Rome will sign off on the Dallas program.
In an Oct. 18 news briefing, Gregory listed the key issues, long
familiar to observers:
- The role and powers of lay review boards;
- The definition of sexual abuse;
- Due process guarantees for accused priests.
The response, which was neither the outright rejection some in the
Vatican wanted, nor the cautious approval many in the U.S. bishops’
conference hoped for, means that for now the norms adopted in Dallas are not
binding on American bishops. Where the norms conflict with the Code of Canon
Law, for now canon law takes precedence.
The response was not a surprise. NCR first reported that
the Vatican would have difficulties with Dallas documents June 14, the day of
the bishops’ vote, and in mid-September broke the story of the Vatican
letter declining to grant legal recognition to the norms.
A “mixed commission,” composed of four representatives
from the Vatican and four American bishops, will try to hammer out a resolution
before the full meeting of the U.S. bishops in Washington Nov. 11-14.
The men chosen to represent the Vatican for the commission are:
Archbishop Julian Herranz, a Spaniard and the president of the Pontifical
Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts; Archbishop Tarcisio
Bertone, an Italian and secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith; Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, a Colombian serving as
prefect of the Congregation for Clergy; and Archbishop Francesco Monterisi, an
Italian and the secretary of the Congregation for Bishops.
U.S. prelates chosen for the commission are: Chicago Cardinal
Francis George; San Francisco Archbishop William Levada; Rockford, Ill., Bishop
Thomas Doran; and Bridgeport, Conn., Bishop William Lori.
George and Levada both assisted in the composition of a proposal
to examine ways to oversee the implementation by the U.S. bishops of the
“Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”
For six years, Levada served in the Vatican’s Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Lori currently serves on the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee
on Sexual Abuse. Doran for eight years worked in the Roman Rota tribunal in the
Vatican. He currently is a member of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court
in the Vatican.
The norms have been awaiting Vatican action since mid-June. From
the beginning, it has been clear that many in the Vatican are troubled by the
Dallas program. In general, officials in Rome worry that the American bishops
went too far in the direction of summary justice for accused priests, and were
too eager to abdicate their own responsibility for resolving the problem to
outside agents, whether civil authorities or lay review boards.
The intra-Vatican debate, therefore, did not shape up primarily as
pro-Dallas vs. anti-Dallas, but rather how hard an anti-Dallas line to
take.
Vatican factions
One Vatican faction, led by Re, argued for a flexible approach,
allowing the U.S. bishops to experiment with applying the norms between now and
the review after two years fixed in Dallas. If the approach resulted in a
number of well-founded appeals from suspended priests to Rome, this line of
reasoning went, the problem could always be handled in church courts.
Indeed, Re actually favored a prudent silence rather than a public
letter -- at most, favoring a letter that merely promised careful consideration
after the experimental period.
The approach was vintage Re, the most prominent of the so-called
“Benelli’s widows,” meaning someone who owes his placement in
the Roman curia to Cardinal Giovanni Benelli. The right-hand man of Pope Paul
VI, Benelli was known for a subtle, flexible, quintessentially
“Italian” approach to solving problems.
Pushing for a harder line were two of the men chosen for the
commission, Castrillón and Herranz. Both men argued behind the scenes
that the Dallas program has serious canonical flaws, and it serves no purpose
to disguise what would eventually have to be a negative judgment.
Castrillón and Re are both widely viewed as leading
candidates to be the next pope. Herranz is the highest-ranking member of Opus
Dei to serve in the Roman curia.
In the end, Re’s letter reflected a compromise between these
two views. The opening paragraphs were full of praise of the American bishops,
expressing “full solidarity with the bishops of the United States in their
firm condemnation of sexual misdeeds against minors.”
The letter went on, however, to cite “confusion and
ambiguity” in the norms, to assert that both Dallas texts “contain
provisions which in some aspects are difficult to reconcile with the universal
law of the church,” and to complain of “vague or imprecise”
terminology that is “difficult to interpret.”
Whatever the mixed commission comes up with will have to be
submitted first to the U.S. bishops for reconsideration, and eventually back to
Rome.
In the United States, meanwhile, spokes-persons for the
bishops’ conference are striving to phrase the Vatican response as a
fundamentally affirmative stance, with some work to be done on matters of
detail.
“There is a strong sense of wanting to collaborate,”
said Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, vice-president of the U.S.
bishops’ conference, said on a live call-in program on WBUR in Boston Oct.
22.
“In our conversations in the Vatican, there were no major red
flags, no particular areas of concern,” he said. “The spirit was very
collaborative and cooperative.”
Reaction in other circles, however, was considerably stronger.
Victims groups were largely critical, seeing the Vatican response as a retreat
from the zero-tolerance stance adopted in Dallas.
“This is a tragic day for American Catholics,” read an
Oct. 18 statement from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“Without Vatican approval, we’re now back at square one. Each bishop
can decide for himself how to handle abusive priests. The Dallas Charter, weak
though it was, has now been gutted.
“American bishops may try to ‘spin’ this and
minimize what the Vatican has done, but make no mistake about it -- Rome’s
bureaucrats have rejected the weak measures bishops adopted in Dallas, and our
children are at risk as a result,” the statement said.
David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network, told
NCR Oct. 18 that his group will protest the failure to include
laypeople, especially sexual abuse victims, on the mixed commission to work out
the differences between the Vatican and the U.S. bishops.
“It’s almost like, have they learned nothing?”
Clohessy asked.
‘It’s a bishops’
document’
Skylstad addressed the omission of laity from the mixed commission
during the Oct. 22 WBUR broadcast.
“It’s a bishops’ document, and they felt they
wanted the input to be high-level to work it out,” Skylstad said.
“This is the normal procedure for the church.”
Priests’ groups, meanwhile, generally welcomed the Vatican
action. Fr. Robert J. Silva, president of the National Federation of
Priests’ Councils, told the Associated Press the Vatican response is
“good news.”
“It’ll be a great help. It will give the priests more
energy to pursue just treatment,” said Silva.
Fr. Richard Bullock, a priest of the Boston archdiocese, told WBUR
that the Vatican diagnosis of the weaknesses in the Dallas program have been
confirmed in Boston.
“There has not been due process in our diocese,” Bullock
said. “Priests have been charged and summarily removed. There has been a
rush to judgment and a presumption of guilt.” Bullock said he hopes that
protection of due process would be “ensured by what comes out of
Rome.”
It is not immediately clear what impact the ruling will have on
the canonical appeals already filed by some of the approximately 300 priests
removed from ministry under the terms of the Dallas norms. Gregory said these
appeals “will continue” but did not explain whether they will be
adjudicated under existing canon law, the Dallas norms or the eventual results
of the work of the mixed commission.
Also unclear is what U.S. bishops will now do. Will they implement
Dallas as written, will they await the results of the mixed commission or will
they pick and choose which elements to enforce? Vatican officials were quoted
saying that the bishops should not implement the most controversial points,
while Gregory told the Rome news conference that they would continue full steam
ahead.
Problem areas
In his remarks at the Oct. 18 Rome press conference, Gregory, who
said he was neither disappointed nor surprised by the Vatican response, cited
three areas the mixed commission will have to address.
The first is the precise role and powers of lay review boards at
the national and diocesan levels. Canon law indicates that the power to impose
penalties on priests rests exclusively with his bishop or religious
superior.
Second, Gregory cited the definition of sexual abuse in the Dallas
documents. Vatican officials have been concerned about the sweeping nature of
this standard, which encompasses a wide range of physical and non-physical
acts.
Finally, Gregory listed as a problem area the
“procedures” to be employed when a priest is known to have abused a
minor. Analysts regard that as a reference to due process issues, including the
imposition of a penalty outside canon law’s 10-year statute of limitations
from the victim’s 18th birthday, as well as disregard of the principle
that a priest cannot be removed from ministry without a trial.
Gregory said that the statute of limitations did not come up
during his weeklong meetings with Vatican officials, but that it could come up
in the mixed commission. Skylstad told WBUR that the statute of limitations was
a “difficult issue,” and could not predict how it might be
resolved.
Canon law also guarantees confidentiality to the accused, a rule
that is difficult to reconcile with actions by dioceses nationwide to publicize
the names of priests flagged as alleged abusers. Canon law likewise treats
removal from ministry as a penalty of last resort, but it is the only option
permitted under the Dallas norms.
When a reporter asked Gregory if having the work done by
mid-November would be a miracle, he responded: “You’re talking to a
guy who believes in miracles.”
John L. Allen Jr., NCR Rome correspondent, is currently
on a book tour in the United States. His e-mail address is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 01,
2002
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