Catholic Lay Group Wants More Responsibility To Investigate Clergy Sexual Abuse


Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston is president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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A group of Catholics empowered to advise U.S. bishops on their handling of clergy sex abuse is accusing the bishops of “a loss of moral leadership” and recommending that lay Catholics like themselves should henceforth be responsible for investigating clergy misconduct.

The National Review Board, a lay panel established in 2002 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a strongly worded statement that allegations against former Washington, D.C., Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and accounts of clergy abuse detailed in a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report reflect “a systemic problem within the Church that can no longer be ignored or tolerated by the episcopacy in the United States.”

The NRB was created as part of the U.S. bishops’ response to revelations in 2002 that Catholic authorities had covered up evidence of criminal sexual misconduct by Catholic clergy in the Boston area. The 11-member panel was supposed to work “collaboratively” with the bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, but the statement released Tuesday suggested that model had proved inadequate.

“The evil of the crimes that have been perpetrated reaching into the highest levels of the hierarchy will not be stemmed simply by the creation of new committees, policies, or procedures,” the group charged. “Holding bishops accountable will require an independent review [of an abuse allegation]. … The only way to ensure the independence of such a review is to entrust this to the laity.”

The review board’s statement echoes past criticism that bishops for too long have insisted that they alone are responsible for policing each other, a process they term “fraternal correction.”

“They didn’t trust lay people to know what the problem was,” says Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus at Duquesne University Law School and a former NRB chairman.

In its statement, the NRB called for the establishment of “an anonymous whistleblower policy” modeled after those employed in corporations, higher education and other public and private institutions, to be administered by an organization independent of the Catholic hierarchy. Such a group, the NRB recommended, should be established immediately and given the responsibility of reporting allegations of clergy abuse “to the local bishop, local law enforcement, the nuncio and Rome.” (A nuncio is the Vatican ambassador to a country.)

Efforts to strengthen bishop accountability have been hampered by the fact that under Catholic canon law, a bishop can be removed from his position only by the pope.

“Some bishops say they are only accountable to the Holy Father,” says Cafardi, who has degrees in both canon and civil law. “[But] that seems to indicate they don’t feel accountable to their people.”

Pope Francis has regularly criticized excessive “clericalism” in church culture, the tendency to elevate priests and bishops to a status where they may acquire something close to impunity.

“It’s priests not wanting to say something bad about another priest, or a bishop not wanting bad things to be known about a priest of his diocese,” says Cafardi. “That’s clericalism. It’s when bishops don’t trust us with the truth.”

The NRB push to give the Catholic laity more authority has some support within the U.S. church. The president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, announced earlier this month that the conference is working on a reform plan, one aspect of which would be to increase lay involvement in the investigation of bishop misconduct.

“Lay people bring expertise in areas of investigation, law enforcement, psychology, and other relevant disciplines,” DiNardo said, “and their presence reinforces our commitment to the first criterion of independence.”

Complete Article HERE!

A Catholic Civil War?

Traditionalists want strict adherence to church doctrine. Liberals want the doctrine changed.

By Matthew Schmitz

Pope Francis must resign. That conclusion is unavoidable if allegations contained in a letter written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò are true. Archbishop Viganò, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States from 2011 to 2016, says that Pope Francis knew Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had abused seminarians, but nonetheless lifted penalties imposed on Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI.

No matter what Francis does now, the Catholic Church has been plunged into all-out civil war. On one side are the traditionalists, who insist that abuse can be prevented only by tighter adherence to church doctrine. On the other side are the liberals, who demand that the church cease condemning homosexual acts and allow gay priests to step out of the closet.

Despite their opposing views, the two sides have important things in common. Both believe that a culture of lies has enabled predators to flourish. And both trace this culture back to the church’s hypocritical practice of claiming that homosexual acts are wrong while quietly tolerating them among the clergy.

As the liberal Vatican observer Robert Mickens writes, “There is no denying that homosexuality is a key component to the clergy sex abuse (and now sexual harassment) crisis.” James Alison, himself a gay priest, observes, “A far, far greater proportion of the clergy, particularly the senior clergy, is gay than anyone has been allowed to understand,” and many of those gay clergy are sexually active. Father Alison describes the “absurd and pharisaical” rules of the clerical closet, which include “doesn’t matter what you do so long as you don’t say so in public or challenge the teaching.”

The importance of not challenging church teaching is seen in the contrast of two gay-priest scandals of the Francis pontificate. The first is the case of Msgr. Battista Ricca, a Vatican diplomat who, while stationed in Uruguay, reportedly lived with a man, was beaten at a cruising spot and once got stuck in an elevator with a rent boy. (In Uruguay, the age of consent is 15.) These facts were concealed from Pope Francis, who in 2013 appointed Monsignor Ricca to a position of oversight at the Vatican Bank.

After Monsignor Ricca’s sins were exposed, Francis chose to stand by him, famously saying, “Who am I to judge?” Msgr. Krzysztof Charamsa suffered a less happy fate. The priest, who worked at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, announced in 2015 that he was gay and had a male partner, and asked the church to change its teaching. He was immediately fired. Both Monsignor Ricca and Monsignor Charamsa had sinned, but only one had stepped out of line.

The other rule of the clerical closet is not violating the civil law — or at least not getting caught. Francis defended Monsignor Ricca by distinguishing between sins and crimes: “They are not crimes, right? Crimes are something different.” This distinction provides cover for sex abuse. When countless priests are allowed to live double lives, it is hard to tell who is concealing crimes. Cardinal McCarrick was widely seen as “merely” preying on adult seminarians. Now he has been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor.

Corrupt as this situation is, many Catholic leaders prefer it to the coming civil war. That seemed to be the attitude of Bishop Robert Barron when he called for an investigation that avoids “ideological hobby horses” like priestly celibacy and homosexuality. Bishop Barron is right to insist that accountability comes first. This is why anyone implicated in cover-up — up to and including Pope Francis — needs to resign.

But even if all the men at fault are held accountable, the hypocrisy will continue. The real danger the church faces is not ideological challenge from left or right but a muddled modus vivendi that puts peace before truth.

In 2005 the Vatican attempted to address this problem by instructing seminaries to turn away men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies.” But several Catholic leaders immediately indicated that they would not abide by this rule. Because Pope Benedict did nothing to enforce the decree, it became yet another symbol of Catholic hypocrisy.

According to Catholic teaching, every act of unchastity leads to damnation. But many bishops would rather save face than prevent the ruin of bodies and souls. If the church really does believe that homosexual acts are always and everywhere wrong, it should begin to live what it teaches. This would most likely mean enforcing the 2005 decree and removing clergy members caught in unchastity. If the church does not believe what it says — and there are now many reasons to think that it does not — it should officially reverse its teaching and apologize for centuries of pointless cruelty.

Either way, something must change. Marie Collins, a sex abuse survivor, warned that the crisis in the church is bound to get worse: “More and more countries are going to come forward, and as victims find their voices, it’s going to grow bigger.” Everyone who wants to end sex abuse should pray that the Catholic civil war does not end in stalemate.

Complete Article HERE!

Why don’t women have a role in the Catholic Church?

Cardinals attend Mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on March 12, 2013.

By Margery Eagan

I am part of a dying breed: Catholics who still go to church.

At the rate the Catholic hierarchy is disgracing itself, there’ll soon be none of us left.

How many young people want to join a church that remains oddly obsessed with sex? That says no to gays but yes to bishops who let priests rape little children? That considers birth control a “grave sin,” even among the married?

How many young people want to join a church that still demeans and disrespects women, or half the human race?

The Catholic Church won’t ordain women as priests or even deacons, a sort of priest-lite. Incredibly, the church considers ordaining women one of its worst offenses — but on the exact par with sexually attacking boys and girls.

Women have zero power in church decisions, even those directly affecting them. Instead, hundreds of celibate men get together, by themselves, and decide what women need. Conservative Catholics don’t even want girls to join altar boys serving Mass or have women participate in an annual Easter week feet-washing ritual.

Pope Francis, women’s best hope for reform since the 1960s, nonetheless has a depressingly dated and even juvenile perspective. He has called female theologians “strawberries on the cake,” warned women to become mothers and “not an old maid,” and derided grandmothers as no longer “fertile and vibrant.”

For decades, Catholic women outside the church have trashed these and other absurdities. Earlier this week in Ireland, before Francis’ visit there, former Irish president Mary McAleese again criticized the church she has called the world’s primary “carrier of the virus of misogyny” and “a male bastion of patronizing platitudes.” A church that “regularly criticizes the secular world for its failure to deliver on human rights [but] has almost no culture of critiquing itself.” A church that has “never sought a cure [for this] though a cure is readily available . . . equality.”

McAleese, the mother of a gay son, spoke these words at a conference on women in the church this winter that was originally planned for the Vatican. But the Vatican banned McAleese — a former head of state — from speaking. So the conference was relocated.

I am a fan of Jesuits, an order of smart and typically thoughtful priests. Francis is one. Yet I remember well a Boston College event two years ago marking the selection of the new Jesuit leader. The slide show that night featured picture after picture of men, just men, hundreds and hundreds of men in a massive room — not a woman in sight. Some women in the audience exchanged knowing glances. One raised her hand and asked: What about the women? But not a single Jesuit there, if any noticed at all, remarked on how abnormal, almost ridiculous, this all looked.

I don’t think those Jesuits, or many other bishops and priests, recognize the abnormality, the ridiculousness — perhaps because that’s what the Catholic hierarchy is: men in rooms. All men. Only men. But in light of these endless stories of priests’ sadism, all men and only men seems more than abnormal. It seems diseased.

Catholics get the question all the time: Why stay? Lots of Catholics I know say their faith centers on the radical carpenter who started it all, not on the corrupt institution created and dragged close to ruin — one more time — by men. As one disgusted Catholic put it at Mass last week, she still yearns for a church worthy of Jesus Christ.

Getting there means massive reforms. But a church where men and women share power must be among them. Not that women are perfect, of course. But I have no doubt that Catholic women with power in the church would have saved thousands of children from criminal predators all across Pennsylvania, Boston, America, and much of the world. Here’s what women almost never do: rape children.

Complete Article HERE!

Mexican Cardinal: Pedophile Priests’ Victims Should Think About Their Own Flaws

Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera

By Hemant Mehta

Given the magnitude of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, you’d think Church leaders would be better at responding to the outrage. Say you’re sorry, say you’re working to make the Church more transparent, say that you’ll cooperate with law enforcement whenever there’s an accusation of wrongdoing in the future, etc.

Mexican Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera didn’t get that memo because his reaction was to blame the victims for speaking out.

Even though he acknowledged that some allegations are true, he went after the victims and avoided referring to the Pennsylvania grand jury report in the United States that found some 300 abusive priests in a span of seven decades in six dioceses.

Obeso Rivera’s words came last week, after the report was made public.

“I’m here happy to talk about nice things, not about problematic things, it’s an accusation that is made, and in some cases it’s true. But the evil of many is the consolation of fools, because sometimes those who accuse men of the Church should [be careful] because they have long tails that are easily stepped on.

… Is that supposed to be a threat? You rat on us and we’ll come after you? This isn’t a parable about glass houses. Everyone’s a sinner in some way, but these people were abused by Church leaders, and their abuse was covered up by other Church leaders. When it comes to the people deserving criticism, victims aren’t on the list.

But don’t worry. Obeso Rivera wants you to know he takes the allegations very seriously.

… he did say that the accusations “make us feel bad and we want to improve.”

I’m glad more than 300 priests sexually violating more than 1,000 children over several decades gives him the feels. We wouldn’t want him shedding more than a couple of tears now, would we?

With Church leaders like these, how do Catholics expect anything to change?

Complete Article HERE!

How dare the pope ask ordinary Catholics to atone for child abuse?

It was the church hierarchy’s desperation to protect itself that led to these horrors. It must reform – not us

Pope Francis. ‘The truth about the Catholic church is that it is not fit for purpose, and it has not been fit for purpose for many years.’

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The Catholic church is in meltdown: the appalling story emerged last week of clerical abuse stretching back decades in Pennsylvania, where at least 1,000 children were the victims of 300 priests.

In the UK, a report on the behaviour of the monks at two leading Catholic schools was released recently. That report, from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, details (and believe me, the details are horrendous) abuse over 40 years, affecting perhaps hundreds of children – the true extent of the crimes will probably never be known. As in Pennsylvania, the church authorities tried to cover it up: so in both places, these are double crimes committed by ordained men. First, they abused the most vulnerable young people in their care; and then other ordained men – usually more senior figures – allowed the abuse to continue by seeking to protect, not the children they were responsible for, but themselves and their precious reputations.

And now, after an embarrassing interlude, Pope Francis has spoken out. He has issued a letter – an “unprecedented letter”, we are told. He acknowledges the church’s crimes, he promises zero tolerance (about time) and then he invites “the entire holy faithful people of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command”.

Now, I like Pope Francis. He is charismatic and warm, and seems genuine in his care for the causes a Christian leader should care about. But here, pontiff, I see cardinal red. Because how dare you ask ordinary Catholics like me to atone for the sins of these heinous clerics? How dare you call on us to repent for their sins?

The truth about the Catholic church is that it is not fit for purpose, and it has not been fit for purpose for many years. There was a brief attempt, in the 1960s during the second Vatican council, at reevaluation – and then slam! The door was closed. It’s been run by a self-serving group of misogynistic men for far too long, and now we know they have a shocking number of paedophiles in their ranks. Radical new thinking is called for: those priests in Rome need to look up to the heavens and take in a very big swathe of blue sky.

The biggest horror about asking “the people of God” to repent is this: the church has failed, and failed, and failed again to ask “the people of God” to help it run the institution. It has been all too ready and willing to issue orders to the rest of us – and the miracle is that there are still some Catholic lay people who actually continue to keep some of those orders. Many priests by contrast, as we now know, not only flout the rules but flout them in the worst way possible, by ruining the lives of the most precious people in their midst.

The Catholic church has failed, horribly, to include the very people who could have helped it be a better organisation: its “faithful”. Democracy is dismissed, frowned on, ignored: 50 years ago this year we had a document called Humanae Vitae, that forbade the use of contraception. When the vast majority of western Catholics, in a display of practical democracy, decided to ignore it (the moral position, in mine and many others’ view) it simply buried its head in the sand and said we were wrong. When people like me campaigned and argued for women to be admitted to the priesthood (I am talking about 30 years ago – there are no women who would want to join their ranks now) they told us to be quiet; indeed, debate on the subject was totally shut down by Pope John Paul II. Priests were told not to engage with us on it: I tried it out on a number of occasions, but conversations were brought to an abrupt end.

So it is rich indeed that the pope’s answer to the current troubles is to ask the people to atone for them. He needs to think hard and come up with something very different from all this talk, and indeed from all these meetings with the victims of abuse (we will see that happening again this coming weekend, when he visits Ireland).

Of course it’s good to say sorry: but he’s said sorry repeatedly. Now he needs to do something. The only good news is the miracle that there are still some lay people left in the Catholic church (for some reason all the institution seems to worry about is the lack of priests, when the lack of congregations is a far more critical issue). The proper response to the continuing avalanche of reports on the extent of the abuse is to reduce the power of the clergy – and to call in those who just might be able to give it some help to get back on the rails. In other words: the people of God. Try it, Francis.

Complete Article HERE!