Accountability, transparency and the bishops

It has been almost 10 years since the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States mandated accountability and transparency in regard to the sexual abuse of children, but how that accountability and transparency was defined was ultimately left up to individual bishops, as was their application.

Truly independent oversight by a group of bishops who did not think it necessary to hold themselves to the same sanctions they placed on priests continues to be essentially nonexistent. Diocesan review boards set up to investigate those accused of inappropriate or questionable behavior serve at a bishop’s pleasure, and he alone decides whether or not to follow their recommendations.

Review board decisions are not binding on bishops, and board members themselves have no way of knowing whether they have received all the information a diocese has on an individual priest’s questionable behavior. Diocesan review boards, moreover, do not necessarily investigate all those accused or removed from ministry.

This has played out time and time again since 2002, as bishops across the country have decided not to follow the USCCB’s mandates but rather have spent years and millions of dollars fighting the court-ordered release of documents, files and records, keeping depositions sealed, avoiding having to testify in civil court cases by filing for the federal protections of a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy and challenging state court decisions right up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While no bishop in the United States has ever been held criminally responsible for facilitating or enabling the sexual exploitation of a child, they have cut deals to avoid prosecution in a number of jurisdictions. Bishops have left known sexual predators in ministry, transferred them around a diocese, to other dioceses and even out of the country in attempts to protect a religious institution’s image rather than the children, who are its most vulnerable members and about whom Jesus speaks so often in the gospels.

More than that, saying one is concerned about protecting children in the present and the future does not mitigate any organization’s responsibility for crimes against children committed in the past.

Until arbitrary and outdated criminal and civil laws covering childhood sexual abuse are brought into the 21st century, all children remain at risk. Childhood sexual abuse is an epidemic in this country, an epidemic that worsens daily and one that is not confined to the Catholic community.

However, in every state where there has been movement to revise the criminal and civil statutes of limitation covering the sexual abuse of children, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, together with state Catholic conferences, has been at the forefront in viciously opposing legislative reform that would better protect all children.

This has been the case in numerous states, including Colorado, Ohio, Maryland, New York and now in Pennsylvania, where House Bills 832 and 878 are languishing — not even being allowed into committee, where both discussion and testimony are possible.

Legislators have backed down from doing the morally right thing, which is to allow victims access to justice, because they fear a powerful backlash from a Catholic vote.

Accountability, transparency, justice and morality appear to be absent in the rationale of such opposition. Added to this is an appalling amount of disinformation about proposed legislation that is being spewed out by bishops and state Catholic conferences.

The U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, along with state Catholic conferences and a number of bishops, has publicly stated that removing statutes of limitation is not fair to an accused individual who may not be able to defend himself against claims alleging sexual abuse in the past.

What is never mentioned is that in civil cases, the burden of proof rests with the plaintiff, not with the accused, and if proof is nonexistent, has been destroyed or cannot be found, individual cases will not go forward.
When Archbishop Charles Chaput was the spiritual leader of the Denver archdiocese, he was quoted as saying that the result of any kind of statute of limitation reform would lead to a “dismantling and pillaging [of] the Catholic community,” but the archbishop never offered evidence to support such a specious claim.

In 2007, Delaware passed the Child Victims’ Law, removing all civil statutes of limitation going forward in regard to the sexual abuse of children while opening a two-year civil window for bringing forward previously time-barred cases of abuse by anyone.

Delaware now has the strongest legislation in the country on childhood sexual abuse with no criminal or civil statutes of limitation going forward, and the Catholic community has been neither dismantled nor pillaged.

We have reached a new time in this country with two high ranking clergymen — Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., and Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former vicar of clergy in Philadelphia — now facing criminal charges for putting children in danger because of their mishandling of priests accused of sex crimes.

On Friday, prosecutors in Philadelphia submitted a 53-page motion in the criminal case involving Msgr. Lynn and four others, alleging that “church leaders handled similar accusations against dozens of other priests ‘saying that Msgr. William J. Lynn acted under a well-established, deliberate, orchestrated plan’ by Archdiocese of Philadelphia officials to protect abusive priests.”

Should those who failed so miserably for so long be trusted to take the high ground now and do the right thing? Remember, altruism was never the basis for the U.S. bishops’ 2002 decisions.

Holding those who commit the heinous crime of sexually exploiting children or enable others to do so is much more than the temper of the times. It is matter for the criminal justice system because it is society’s responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Complete Article HERE!

Boston Catholic journal withdraws gay devil column

The oldest Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States has retracted an opinion column suggesting the devil may be responsible for gay attraction.

The column, which appeared Friday in the Archdiocese of Boston’s official newspaper, The Pilot, was titled “Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction.” It was written by Daniel Avila, an associate director for policy and research for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In the column, Avila says “the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil.”

It also says “disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart.” It says that when “natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God.”

The 182-year-old newspaper withdrew the column from its website on Wednesday, saying it had failed to recognize the “theological error” before publication. It posted an apology from Avila saying the column didn’t represent the position of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose stated purpose is to “promote the greater good which the Church offers humankind,” and wasn’t authorized for publication.

Avila said he deeply apologized for the “hurt and confusion” the column caused.

Archdiocesan officials said Avila’s apology would appear in the issue of The Pilot to be published this week, The Boston Globe reported.

The Boston archdiocese, the bishops’ group and Avila were involved in communications leading to the decision to retract the column, said archdiocese spokesman Terrence Donilon, who called Avila “passionate about his faith and passionate about his church.”

“This one,” Donilon said, “clearly just got away from him.”

Several gay rights organizations, including DignityUSA, an association of gay Catholics, and MassEquality, a Massachusetts group organized to support same-sex marriage, didn’t immediately return telephone or email messages seeking comment Wednesday night.

Complete Article HERE!

Vatican stunned by Irish embassy closure

Catholic Ireland’s stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See’s prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive, diplomatic sources said on Friday.

The closure brought relations between Ireland and the Vatican, once ironclad allies, to an all-time low following the row earlier this year over the Irish Church’s handling of sex abuse cases and accusations that the Vatican had encouraged secrecy.

Ireland will now be the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition without an embassy in the Vatican.

“This is really bad for the Vatican because Ireland is the first big Catholic country to do this and because of what Catholicism means in Irish history,” said a Vatican diplomatic source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

He said Ireland informed the Vatican shortly before the announcement was made on Thursday night.

Dublin’s foreign ministry said the embassy was being closed because “it yields no economic return” and that relations would be continued with an ambassador in Dublin.

The source said the Vatican was “extremely irritated” by the wording equating diplomatic missions with economic return, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values.

Diplomats said the Irish move might sway others to follow suit to save money because double diplomatic presences in Rome are expensive.

It was the latest crack in relations that had been seen as rock solid until a few years ago.

DAMNING REPORT

In July, the Vatican took the highly unusual step of recalling its ambassador to Ireland after Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the Holy See of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests.

The Irish parliament passed a motion deploring the Vatican’s role in “undermining child protection frameworks” following publication of a damning report on the diocese of Cloyne.

The Cloyne report said Irish clerics concealed from the authorities the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, after the Vatican disparaged Irish child protection guidelines in a letter to Irish bishops.

While Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore denied the embassy closure was linked to the row over sexual abuse, Rome-based diplomats said they believed it probably played a major role.

“All things being equal, I really doubt the mission to the Vatican would have been on the list to get the axe without the fallout from the sex abuse scandal,” one ambassador to the Vatican said, on condition of anonymity.

Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, said he was profoundly disappointed by the decision and hoped the government would “revisit” it.

“This decision seems to show little regard for the important role played by the Holy See in international relations and of the historic ties between the Irish people and the Holy See over many centuries,” Brady said in a statement.

The Vatican has been an internationally recognized sovereign city-state since 1929, when Italy compensated the Catholic Church for a vast area of central Italy known as the Papal States that was taken by the state at Italian unification in 1860.

It has diplomatic relations with 179 countries. About 80 have resident ambassadors and the rest are based in other European cities.

The Vatican guards its diplomatic independence fiercely and in the past has resisted moves by some countries to locate their envoys to the Holy See inside their embassies to Italy.

Dublin said it was closing its mission to the Vatican along with those in Iran and East Timor to help meet its fiscal goals under an EU-IMF bailout. The closures will save the government 1.25 million euros ($1.725 million) a year.

Complete Article HERE!

Philadelphia prosecutors seek to prove pattern of pedophile priests, transfers at March trial

Prosecutors seeking to convict four Roman Catholic priests and a teacher in a pedophilia case want to use evidence of other sexual assault complaints and priest transfers in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

They filed a motion Friday to include relevant conduct at the high-profile trial, which is scheduled for March.

Monsignor William Lynn, 60, is the first U.S. church official charged with child endangerment and accused of transferring predator priests who then abused more victims. Two priests, an ex-priest and a teacher are charged in the same case with raping two boys.

Prosecutors hope to show that Lynn had a pattern of transferring known predators and that priests “had the opportunity and cover” to abuse minors.

They also want to show the jury broad evidence of the archdiocese’s handling of sex-abuse complaints, to try to prove the complaints were ignored, enabling predators and exposing them to new victims.

“The Commonwealth needs the ‘other acts’ evidence to make out core elements of the crimes charged: Lynn’s knowledge, and the intent he shared with his supervisors and with accused priests, are established by the patterns evident in his extensive history of handling priests who sexually assaulted children,” city prosecutors wrote in a pretrial motion filed Friday.

Defense lawyers have a month to file their response and cannot comment on the filing because of a gag order.

They have sought, unsuccessfully, to separate the rape charges from the case against Lynn, who is charged solely for his administrative actions as secretary for clergy.

Lynn’s lawyers say their client was acting on orders from Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, whom he served from 1992 to 2004.

In another key pretrial issue, prosecutors are seeking to preserve Bevilacqua’s testimony before trial. However, the archdiocese argues that the retired cardinal, at 92, suffers from cancer and dementia and should not be dragged into court.

Lynn’s lawyers will clearly try to limit the scope of the trial testimony to job transfers involving the three priests on trial with him. They are the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 64, the Rev. James Brennan, 48, and former priest Edward Avery, 69, along with former teacher Bernard Shero, 48. All of them have denied the charges.

A 2005 grand jury report details sexual assault complaints filed against 63 priests over several decades, many of whom were transferred repeatedly. Lynn features prominently in the report. His lawyers have argued, in part, that Lynn never supervised children and cannot therefore be charged with endangering them.

Lynn’s motion to limit the trial evidence will be argued in December or January.

Three of the defendants are accused of raping the same child, starting when the victim was a 10-year-old altar boy in northeast Philadelphia, according to a February grand jury report underlying the charges. The fourth co-defendant is charged with raping a second boy from a suburban parish.

Complete Article HERE!

Archbishop makes anti-Jewish statements in sermon

Edward Gilbert, the leader of the Catholic Church in the Port of Spain, compared politicians in the southern Caribbean republic to Jews, who he said only care about their own.

“The Jews were compassionate and caring for their own, they were compassionate and caring to the people of their nation, to the people of their race, to the people of their ethnic communities,” Gilbert said during a Jubilee Mass Oct. 24 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in San Fernando, Trinidad, to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the Roman Catholic mission there. “However, that wasn’t enough for Jesus. Jesus took that teaching and universalized it.

“In many cases in this country, there are people who love one another, who are compassionate, but they have the mind-set of the original Jewish people. They are good to their own … but they have not universalized the concept of love.”

The Anti-Defamation League called the statements “a disturbing repackaging of ancient anti-Jewish canards and supersessionist beliefs.”

“Archbishop Gilbert devalues Judaism over and against Christianity,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said in a statement. “The false notion that Jews only care about themselves and don’t care enough about others is one of the major pillars of classical anti-Semitism.”

Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s international director of interreligious affairs, said “such prejudicial comments not only reflect personal ignorance, but also ignorance of the teaching of the Catholic Church since Nostra Aetate.”

The 1974 Vatican Guidelines on Nostra Aetate warn against such misrepresentation and generalizations, Rosen added.

“Archbishop Gilbert’s comments again highlight the need for more effective global Catholic education regarding the Holy See’s official teaching on Jews and Judaism,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!