The proposed plan by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops looks like it might actually reasonably address the problem of abusive priests and the hierarchy that enables them.
The plans seem to involve much more lay influence, much more public openness of the process, and much less tolerance of sexual abuse by priests.
The main problem is, the policies (to be debated and voted upon at the next bishops meeting in Dallas, next month) must be agreed-upon and enforced by the Vatican, since it is to the Pope that the individual bishops (hence their dioceses) answer.
Various officials in the Vatican has expressed a lot of resistance to things like automatically reporting allegations to the civil authorities. And the current slow, bureaucratic process in the Vatican to laicize (defrock) priests has also hampered efforts to get past abusers out of the clergy.
Instead, various conservatives in the Vatican Curia (the bureaucracy that runs things for the Pope) have lashed out at the American media for their reporting on the whole affair. Scholarly papers have been published in the Vatican media about how bishops are not responsible for what their priests do (tell that to dissident priests), and editorials have been written about how the US has a “morbid and scandalistic curiosity” about the matter.
But amidst defense of the priesthood by claiming that fewer priests molest than laity, or that more women molest than is commonly reported, is the same myopia that for so long blinded the US bishops (and, in some cases, still does).
The American public — including the Catholic laity — is not condemning the priesthood as a whole. It’s certainly disgusted and furious over the abuse that has occured. But what really has it in a froth is the systematic hiding of priestly abuse, the slaps on the wrist and quiet shuffling of abusers to different parishes or even dioceses, the covert payoffs, the system that let abusers get away with it, and get away with it over and over and over.
That is what has people so angry. And that is what has interest high enough that camera crews were camped out at the Vatican when the American cardinals were there.
That’s not morbidity. That’s anger, and an anger that’s waiting to pounce if the Church doesn’t clean up its act.
The US bishops — many of them, at least — seem to be coming to that realization.
The Curia does not. Instead, like some scamster caught by Morley Safer and the 60 Minutes camera crew, they’re shouting, “Get that out of my face!” and “You’ll have to leave, this is private property!”
They know not what they do.