A year after U.S. Catholic bishops promised reforms to ensure child abuse allegations are dealt with fairly and promptly, few of the changes have been completed and fewer wounds have healed.
The new policies forged last June in response to a painful scandal fanned hopes among many of the nation’s 60 million Catholics that a pattern of abuse had been recognized and addressed.
Many now say the feeling is tempered by a creeping realization the church’s problems will take years to repair.
While the bishops have begun to institute changes such as establishing church tribunals and asking for background checks on church employees and volunteers, they have only recently launched studies to determine the scope and causes of the scandal.
Little yet is known about how closely the nation’s 195 dioceses have complied with the reforms called for in the bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. An audit began this month.
“The charter was a good blueprint, but the church has to be aggressive in demonstrating it’s being implemented and upheld,” said R. Scott Appleby, a church historian at the University of Notre Dame. “Until more dioceses have that in place, trust won’t be restored.”
Members of the lay review board the bishops appointed to deal with the scandal say obstacles have arisen everywhere–from who should fill seats on the national board to inquiries from bishops about the wording of survey questions.
“This case is so enormously complicated,” said William R. Burleigh, former chief executive of the E.W. Scripps Co., who sits on the national review board. “We can talk about the progress we’re making, but until the end of this year, we’re not going to have big tangible results to point to.”
As church leaders call for patience and their efforts continue, victims groups and lay activists frustrated by the slow pace have begun to feel the power of their own voices. Groups from Massachusetts to California have withheld donations, turned to prosecutors for assistance, and lobbied state legislatures to impose remedies from the outside.
6 bishop resignations
In the last year, pressure from the pews has forced the resignations of six bishops, including the powerful Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, in whose diocese the scandal erupted. Two other bishops struck deals with local prosecutors and avoided criminal charges in return for agreeing to share information and power.
Twelve months ago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops convened in Dallas amid intense public scrutiny. Marathon closed-door sessions included heated debates and tearful declarations from victims who had been abused by priests.
When they emerged, the bishops announced a plan to institute lay review boards to consider abuse cases around the country and a strict policy to remove any priest from ministry who had committed any act of sexual abuse “past, present, or future.”
As the furor of the spring and summer of 2002 has settled down, observers say the bishops have made enormous strides in an institution that moves at a glacial pace.
“There is an awareness that the church has entered a new phase as a result of this crisis,” Appleby said. “There’s a long way to go, but no one can responsibly believe the church can continue the patterns of the past.”
Abuse-awareness training has been ordered for employees and volunteers. New passages have been added to the church’s canon law to account for the reality of priest molestation, and many of the regional tribunals that will try priests accused of sexual abuse have been established. After Vatican-led training sessions, church law experts now are more familiar with a dusty corner of the church’s canons.
“We are much better off than we were a year ago,” said Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We’ve got a plan, and we are implementing a plan.”
In contrast to the Dallas meeting, the abuse scandal will make only a brief appearance on the agenda–in the form of an update on the work done by the review board–when bishops meet again June 19 and 20 in St. Louis.
Elsewhere, the scandal remains close to the surface, however.
A Gallup poll released in December found 4 out of 10 Catholics contributed less money to the church because of the scandal, as many dioceses, particularly in the Northeast, have reported declines in church attendance.
The Archdiocese of Chicago–which enacted reforms a decade ago that now are being echoed nationally–has been a notable counterpoint, said Chancellor Jimmy Lago. Donations have increased to more than $230 million, and church attendance has not been measurably affected, he said.
Still, as Burleigh says: “All the poison is not yet out of the system.”
“Part of what has to be understood is that healing has its own calendar and timetable. Anybody in the church thinking `let’s get this over with’ is replicating something of the mindset that got the church into this in the first place,” Appleby said.
“I think we’re going to have more of this for the next five years,” said Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America. “I don’t think it’s going to go away quickly.”
Central to recovering from the crisis is the simple question of determining how deep it goes, Gregory said. Three reports are under way to assess the scope and nature of the sexual abuse scandal and are expected to conclude next winter, board officials have said.
“One of the great criticisms that the church has faced is, `How extensive is this?’ That’s one of the things that we were asked directly and continue to be” asked, Gregory said.
Annual audit of progress
The first step is an annual audit of how fully bishops have complied with the bishops conference’s Dallas charter. Conducted by the Gavin Group of Boston, it began June 1 in the Diocese of Belleville, Gregory’s home diocese.
The John Jay College of Criminal Law in New York is conducting a separate survey of the scope of sexual abuse cases since 1950.
The final study is being conducted by national review board member and Washington attorney Robert S. Bennett. It looks into likely causes of priestly sexual abuse.
Conducted through a series of interviews with victims, bishops, priests and outside experts, Bennett’s report in December or January likely will serve as a preview for a fourth and more exhaustive study to be commissioned by the bishops conference next year.
In addition, the bishops’ national review board in November appointed Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI official, to head its Washington, D.C.-based Office of Child and Youth Protection.
This year, her office helped pick the auditor examining how fully diocesan bishops have implemented the Dallas reforms. Before that, it began establishing in each diocese a “safe environment” program patterned on one in Boston aimed at preventing priests from abusing children.
Child protection training
Dioceses now require everyone from bishops to Boy Scout volunteers and Catholic school janitors to take part in child protection training programs in neighborhood churches and diocesan schools.
Some skeptics have been encouraged by the increased involvement of laypeople under the Dallas charter, including McChesney’s office, the national review board, independent counselors to help abuse victims, and advisory boards of non-priests to counsel diocesan leaders on how to pursue abuse cases.
“It’s a small step, but it’s the first time in the history of the Catholic Church that the laity has been involved at this level,” said Illinois Appellate Judge Anne Burke, who also sits on the national review board.
Few of those diocesan boards have yet been put to the test, however, and it is believed that they have yet to make any recommendations to local bishops on abuse cases.
Likewise, questions about other changes have pervaded the healing process, from doubts about abuse surveys to questions about interpreting new church norms. Many canonists say they are unsure how the Holy See in Rome will interpret the rules set by American bishops last June and amended in November by Vatican officials.
Even fundamental tenets of the new changes–like how to use diocesan tribunals to try priests accused of sexual abuse–have had to be explained to many church lawyers who would serve on the tribunals, said Rev. Patrick Lagges, the Chicago archdiocese’s vicar for canonical services.
In Chicago, preliminary investigations of the allegations against five priests removed last June only began on March 1, when guidelines stemming from the bishops meetings were put in place.
“All of us are learning a lot these days,” Lagges said.
The slow climb up the learning curve brought exasperation from victims’ rights groups and lay activists already frustrated by years of having their concerns brushed aside.
“It’s not to say that there’s been no progress–there’s been some–but mostly because of secular authorities,” said David Clohessy of St. Louis. The national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Clohessy and his brother–now a priest–were abused by the same Missouri priest in the late 1960s.
Clohessy’s group was among those invited to address the bishops conference in Dallas last June. They have not been invited back this year and will hold their own meeting in St. Louis on overlapping dates.
New strategy toward relief
Clohessy said many have felt increasingly shut out of the bishops’ reform process. He said lay groups gradually found new strategies to pressure the church through threats of criminal prosecution and withholding donations.
“Painfully and reluctantly, we’ve turned to civil authorities,” he said. “If the court system opens the door to allow us in, that’s where the real change happens. The trend has been much more toward educating parents, lobbying lawmakers, and prodding police and prosecutors.”
Activists have pressed to obtain access to church records and to rewrite state laws to ease the statutes of limitations that prevent prosecution of old abuse cases. Clohessy’s group has lobbied on the statute of limitations issue in Illinois, California and New York and plans to expand its efforts into Ohio and Wisconsin, among others.
“This is a new mindset for Catholics,” said Carolyn Disco, survivor support chairwoman for the New Hampshire branch of the Voice of the Faithful, a group that calls for more lay involvement in the church and whose Boston chapter has withheld donations from the church.
“I think the whole scandal has awakened the laity to what’s going on here. And it leads to other questions,” Disco said. “How are we, as a church, organized? How is power exercised? What options do we have to bring about developments?”
“They’ve done a lot of things, but it’s there to protect them. They’re still playing hardball in the courts, and they haven’t reached out to these people who were hurt,” said Rev. Thomas Doyle, the author of a 1985 report on sexual abuse in the church that was ignored by bishops.
“Trust is eroded.”
