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Members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops meet at the annual USCCB meeting in the fall, Tuesday, November 13, 2018 in Baltimore. (AP Photo / Patrick Semansky)
BALTIMORE – On Tuesday, several Catholic bishops urged their colleagues at their national meeting to take action to counter the crisis of sexual abuse by clerics, despite a Vatican order to postpone the vote on key proposals. .
"We are not Vatican branch managers," said Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield, Illinois. "Our people are demanding action."
He suggested a non-binding vote to give an idea of the bishops' aspirations for anti-abuse efforts.
Bishop George Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, echoed Paprocki's appeal, saying that the parishioners and priests of his diocese were "very, very angry".
The three-day meeting opened on Monday with a surprise announcement by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Vatican, he said, ordered the bishops to postpone the vote on two anti-abuse proposals following a worldwide meeting convened by the Vatican on sexual abuse in February.
DiNardo said that the Vatican order had two main reasons: to ensure that the measures taken by the American bishops are in harmony with the measures decided at the February meeting, and to give more time to examine certain aspects. American proposals likely to conflict with the church. law.
Even without the option of a formal vote this week, the US bishops have continued consideration of the two key proposals. A new code of conduct for individual bishops would be established; the other would create a special commission, including lay experts, to investigate complaints against bishops.
However, the bishops are under pressure to take additional measures, as stressed on Tuesday the chairman of the National Review Board, Francesco Cesareo, whom the bishops created in 2002 to oversee the church's efforts to prevent sexual abuse perpetrated by the clergy.
"Your response to this crisis has been incomplete," Cesareo told the bishops. "It is shameful that the sin of abuse was hidden and allowed to infect until it was discovered by the secular world."
He cited the grand jury report published in August in Pennsylvania. He detailed decades of abuse and concealment in six dioceses, alleging that more than 1,000 children had been abused over the years by about 300 priests. Since then, a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia has started working on a federal criminal case focused on the exploitation of children and attorneys general in at least 11 other states have opened investigations.
"How many souls have been lost because of this crisis?" Cesareo said.
He urged all US bishops to commit to an in-depth analysis of the records of their dioceses, dating back at least to 1950, and to publicly share a list of all clergy credibly accused of murder. have sexually abused minors or vulnerable adults.
"To maintain credibility, the review process must involve lay people in some form, such as a diocesan review committee or an external firm," Cesareo said.
Some bishops have taken this step, he noted, and urged others to do the same.
Cesareo also approved the proposal of the Bishops' Conference to conduct a thorough investigation into the scandal of dishonored church leader Theodore McCarrick. Pope Francis removed McCarrick from his duties as Cardinal in July, after church investigators had declared that an allegation that he would have groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was believable.
Later, several former seminarians and priests reported that they too were victims of McCarrick's violence or harassment as an adult, triggering a debate about who would have known about him. and conceal McCarrick's misconduct.
Anita Raines, National Conference Advisory Council, said any investigation into the McCarrick case needed to determine the type of care her victims received and provide details on the financial settlements they had received.
Raines also called for an audit of Catholic seminaries in the United States, including an investigation into a possible "predatory homosexual behavior" that would take place at home.
Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, Missouri, expressed dismay that the Vatican "do not trust us" and asked Cesareo what the USCCB should do.
"Act resolutely on this issue and keep it moving forward," said Cesareo. "If that does not happen, I fear for the future of our church."
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Crary reported from New York.
