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By DAVID McFADDEN and DAVID CRARY, Associated Press
BALTIMORE (AP) – US Catholic priests expressed frustration on Wednesday as a national assembly focused on clerical sexual abuse was coming to an end with no further energetic measures to fight the multiform crisis.
By avoiding any direct confrontation with the Vatican, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops ended public meetings of its three-day meeting without any vote on two major anti-abuse proposals that had been drafted a few weeks ago. On the eve of this week's meeting, the Vatican announced a surprise order for this action to be postponed to a global meeting on sexual abuse scheduled for February.
"The Holy See's decision to coerce us into a limited response," said Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vermont. "We are all disappointed at not being able to do what we wanted."
The American Catholic Church has been dealing with sex abuse scandals for many years, but this year's events have weighed heavily on the credibility of management.
In August, a report from a grand jury in Pennsylvania 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, federal prosecutors and attorneys general of several other states have opened investigations.
At this week's meeting, the bishops appeared to be very angry and embarrassed by the scandal involving the disgraced church leader, Theodore McCarrick, who allegedly ill-treated and harassed youth and seminarians for many years while 39, he became Archbishop of Washington and a member of the College of Cardinals his elimination by Pope Francis in July.
Several investigations, including one in the Vatican, are underway to determine who might have known and concealed McCarrick's alleged misconduct. The US bishops expressed the desire to know the details of the investigation at the Vatican, but they rejected a motion on Wednesday demanding access to information discovered during this process.
"We have taken no official action to differentiate ourselves from the shameful behavior of any of ours," said Bishop Liam Cary of Baker, Oregon. "What are people doing with our silence?"
Bishop Michael Olson, Bishop of Fort Worth, Texas, noted with regret that McCarrick had not been defrocked and would have been eligible to participate in this week's assembly.
"He's not welcome," Olson said. "We should say it for him and out of respect for those he has hurt."
On Wednesday, the bishops discussed the two anti-abuse proposals originally planned for the votes. A new code of conduct for individual bishops would be established; the other would create a special commission of nine members, composed of six lay experts and three clergy, to examine complaints against the bishops.
Conference leaders said the Vatican had intervened to ensure that the measures taken by the American bishops were in line with those decided at a worldwide meeting convened by the Vatican on sexual abuse in February. They also stated that it required more time to consider certain aspects of US proposals that might conflict with church law.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, head of the Bishops' Conference, announced that a new working group on sexual violence would use to refine these proposals and to discuss the issue. others before the world meeting in Rome in February. One proposed step is to put in place a national mechanism for publishing the names of clergy members who are the subject of motivated abuse complaints.
"I opened this meeting by expressing some disappointment and I end the meeting with hope," DiNardo said. "We leave this place determined to take the most energetic steps possible as soon as possible."
In another action, the bishops approved a pastoral letter condemning racism, the first time they have spoken in a group on this topic since 1979.
"Every racist act – every comment, every joke, every derogatory look as a reaction to the color of skin, ethnicity or place of origin" is a failure to recognize another person as a brother or sister, created in the image of God, "the document says.
She also denounced the racial profiling of Hispanics and African Americans and denounced "growing fear and harassment" of people from Muslim countries.
According to Catholic News Service, the committee responsible for the pastoral letter rejected an amendment proposing to include the Confederate flag as a symbol of hatred, as well as flowing knots and swastikas.
The bishops also voted in favor of a campaign for the sanctity of Sister Thea Bowman, a slave descendant born in Mississippi who became the first black member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration and – in 1989 – the first black woman to address a national assembly of the bishops' conference.
Among the bishops elected to the USCCB's posts was the Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, who will lead the Committee of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. Cordileone, a vocal opponent of gay marriage, suggested Tuesday that the bishops commission a new study on the link between sexual abuse within the clergy and the presence of homosexuals in the priesthood. A study commissioned by the church in 2004 determined that there was no connection.
Not far from the meeting venue, a Minnesota lawyer handling sexual abuse cases across the country and three men who claim to be victims of clergy violence during their childhood gathered to announce a lawsuit against the conference of bishops, accusing him of hiding the crimes of predatory priests.
Jeff Anderson, who filed a lawsuit this week in a federal court in Minnesota, said the bishops had been named because their dioceses kept secret records of clergy whose misconduct could expose the police to the police. 39, church to more charges of abuse.
"We are taking this opportunity to do everything in our power to protect the children and to clear the secrets," said Anderson.
The federal prosecution seeking a jury trial has six complainants; three joined Anderson in Baltimore.
Among them was Joseph McClean of Minneapolis. The priest who, according to him, abused him decades ago was publicly designated as a "credible defendant" in 2015 by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
"I am here to protect children today, I am here to protect children tomorrow, and I am here to protect adult children and who have not had the opportunity to heal abuses of which they have been victims, "said McLean. I said.
Crary reported from New York.
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