All the Pope's Men (33 page)

October 30, 2002
Vatican spokesperson Navarro-Valls released a statement indicating that the commission had completed its work, but he revealed nothing in terms of how it had resolved differences between the Dallas norms and the
Code of Canon Law.
“On the days of October 28 and 29, the mixed commission of the Holy See and the bishops’ conference of the United States of America met in the Vatican for the revision of the ‘norms,’ " Navarro’s statement read.

November 4, 2002
The mixed commission released the results of its work. Those results included:

A more restrictive standard for what constitutes “sexual abuse." The move followed complaints that the definition in Dallas was so broad as to include a wide range of behaviors that, while inappropriate, do not necessarily justify permanent removal from ministry. In place of the “physical and non-physical interactions" definition in the Dallas charter borrowed from the Canadian bishops’ document
From Pain to
Hope
of 1992, the commission reverted to the language currently in the
Code of Canon Law
: “An external, objectively grave violation of the Sixth Commandment." By way of explanation, the commission added that, “a canonical offense against the Sixth Commandment need not be a complete act of intercourse. Nor, to be objectively grave, does an act need to involve force, physical contact, or a discernible harmful outcome."

A clarification of the powers and status of lay review boards. Norm 4 from Dallas had read: “To assist the diocesan/eparchial bishop in his work, each diocese/eparchy will have a review board." The revised norms read: “Each diocese/eparchy will also have a review board that will function as a confidential consultative body to the bishop/eparch in discharging his responsibilities." The change in wording emphasizes that these boards are consultative only and that it is the diocesan bishop who has responsibility for priestly discipline. The revised document also drops norm 6 from Dallas, which called for the creation of appellate boards at a regional level. The mixed commission felt these boards would conflict with the role of existing appellate courts under the
Code of Canon Law
.

Insistence on canonical trials. Instead of automatic removal from ministry as soon as an accusation of sexual abuse surfaces, the revised norms call on the bishop to conduct a “preliminary investigation in harmony with canon law." If the accusation appears credible, the priest is to be suspended from ministry, and even prohibited from celebrating Mass in public. The bishop is also to report the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in keeping with the papal
motu
proprio
of May 18,
Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela
. That document gives the congregation the authority to take up the case itself or to remand it to a local church court. The assumption was that local ecclesiastical tribunals would generally handle American cases, although experience in 2003 suggested there may be fewer trials than originally anticipated because in many concrete instances of clear guilt the congregation seemed inclined to authorize an extrajudicial solution.

November 11–14, 2002 The U.S. bishops met in Washington and adopted the Essential Norms for Diocesan/Eparchial Policies Dealing with Allegations of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Priests or Deacons as revised by the mixed commission.

November 21, 2002
The National Catholic Reporter
published the full text of the norms governing “grave delicts" including sexual abuse of minors decreed by Pope John Paul II’s May 18, 2001
motu proprio
titled
Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela.
Previously these norms had been released by the Vatican only on a confidential, case-by-case basis. Canon lawyers able to examine the document for the first time concluded that it generally did not create conflicts with the norms adopted by the American bishops.

November 25, 2002
Cardinal Julio Terrazas Sandoval of Bolivia, a Redemptorist, was in Rome for the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and spoke at a press conference. He was asked if he agreed with what his fellow Latin American cardinals had said about the American crisis. “I have of course heard the opinions of my fellow cardinals," Terrazas Sandoval replied. “I don’t know the situation well, but it does seem there is an institution in [U.S.] society that has as its goal to speak ill of the Church. In Bolivia, we hear there is a tendency [in the United States] to overgeneralize about the Church. There seems to be a morbid focus on bad news. I don’t know if this is an accurate impression, but some news reports certainly create doubts in those who read them. There seems to be an effort to demonize situations and movements."

November 30, 2002
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, addressed the American crisis during an appearance in Murcia, Spain. The occasion was the congress “Christ: Way, Truth and Life," over which the cardinal presided, at the Catholic University of St. Anthony. The cardinal was asked, “This past year has been difficult for Catholics, given the space dedicated by the media to scandals attributed to priests. There is talk of a campaign against the Church. What do you think?" His response: “In the Church, priests also are sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower. In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information or to the statistical objectivity of the facts. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the Church." Ratzinger’s assertion concerning “less than 1 percent of priests" appears to have been based on an analysis by Philip Jenkins, which concluded that 3 percent of priests have engaged in sexual abuse and 0.3 percent are pedophiles. As noted above, other analysts have suggested slightly higher percentages on both points.

November 31, 2002
Representatives of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, the American federation of men’s orders, voiced concern in Rome that the revised U.S. norms may compromise the autonomy traditionally enjoyed by religious communities. The objections came at an assembly of the Union of Superiors General, the worldwide umbrella group for men’s orders, and in Vatican meetings in early December. On December 1, the USG voted to give full backing to the position taken by the Conference of Major Superiors of Men. The top officers of the American federation, Conventual Franciscan Fr. Canice Connors, president, and Marist Fr. Ted Keating, executive director, came to Rome to present their objections. Worries included that diocesan bishops might try to compel superiors to divulge confidential information on priests, might seek to block even an internal assignment with the order, or try to revoke a priest’s authorization to say Mass within the community. Some bishops may also seek to prevent international members from entering the United States. In addition, since religious communities generally do not have canonical tribunals as dioceses do, it was not entirely clear how religious superiors were to proceed. Religious order priests were not covered by the norms adopted by the U.S. bishops in Dallas in June. However, when the norms were revised by the mixed commission, religious priests were included through a little-noticed change in the document’s first footnote. Leaders in religious life discovered the switch only on November 5, prompting urgent requests for dialogue with the U.S. bishops and an appeal to the Vatican. Meanwhile, Connors and Keating drew an appreciative response at the USG meeting for the general way religious orders had approached the problem. One superior general said he had been contacted by U.S. diocesan priests to express gratitude for the stand taken by the Conference of Major Superiors of Men in Philadelphia in August, when it was decided that priest abusers would be removed from public ministry but not necessarily from their communities.

December 4, 2002
Respected Vatican affairs writer Orazio Petrosillo addressed the conference of the International Catholic Union of the Press (UCIP). During a roundtable discussion, Petrosillo, who writes for the Rome daily
II Messagero
and who teaches journalism at the Center for Interdisciplinary Communication Studies at the Gregorian University, responded to the question, “Why has the mass media mounted this campaign against the Church?" Though Petrosillo is Italian, he spoke in French. Petrosillo indicated three groups in the United States that may have inspired such a campaign: “Masonic lodges," “Jewish lobbies," and “groups of free thought and free morals" such as gays. As for the Jews, Petrosillo specified that their motive would be “to punish the Catholic Church for its defense of the right of the Palestinians to have a country." Petrosillo said he was only giving voice to what “everyone thinks," while acknowledging that one can’t make conclusive judgments on the basis of circumstantial evidence.

December 13, 2002
Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in Rome. He remains, however, a member of the College of Cardinals in good standing. As a cardinal, Law continues to be a member of several congregations, the key decision-making organs of the Vatican, which handle matters related to the sexual abuse crisis. They include: the Congregation for Bishops, which recommends new bishops to the Pope and oversees the performance of bishops and bishops’ conferences; the Congregation for Clergy, which handles clerical discipline and oversees the financial management of dioceses, including the prospect of bankruptcy; the Congregation for Consecrated Life, which has the same responsibility for religious orders; the Congregation for Catholic Education, which oversees seminaries and priestly formation; and the Congregation for Divine Worship, which handles cases of laicization of priests. Law’s membership means that, at least theoretically, he could still be involved in setting Vatican policy on these issues. Law also remains the Holy See’s ecclesiastical delegate, overseeing the pastoral provision in the United States for priests and laity from the Episcopal Church seeking communion with the Roman Catholic Church. In this capacity he oversees the ordination of married Episcopal priests as Roman Catholic priests, and the establishment of personal parishes for faithful who wish to maintain Episcopalian liturgical traditions. This function is under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

December 16, 2002
The Congregation for Bishops granted the
recognitio,
or formal legal approval, to the American sexual abuse norms as approved by the November meeting of the U.S. bishops in Washington, D.C. The decree is published in Latin and dated December 8. Because the U.S. bishops established that after two years of application the norms would be reexamined, the Vatican
recognitio
is valid for a period of two years. The clock started running from the effective date of March 2003, meaning the norms expire in March 2005. The decision is announced in the form of a letter from Re to Gregory. The text of the letter:

With your letter dated November 15, 2002, you requested the
recognitio
for the
Essential Norms for Diocesan/Eparchial
Policies Dealing with Allegations of Sexual Abuse of Minors by
Priests or Deacons
, approved by the Episcopal Conference at the Plenary Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops which took place in Dallas on June 13–15, and revised in the recent General Meeting held in Washington on November 11–14. I am pleased now to send you the Decree of recognitio for the “Essential Norms" and wish to express renewed and sincere appreciation for the pastoral concern and resolve with which the bishops of the United States have addressed the distressing situation caused by such aberrant crimes.

The Holy See is fully supportive of the bishops’ efforts to combat and to prevent such evil. The universal law of the Church has always recognized this crime as one of the most serious offenses which sacred ministers can commit, and has determined that they be punished with the most severe penalties, not excluding—if the case so requires—dismissal from the clerical state (cf. Canon 1395 § 2). Moreover, the Holy Father in the year 2001 already had determined that this crime should be included among the most serious delicts (
graviora delicta
) of clerics, to underscore the Holy See’s aversion to this betrayal of the trust which the faithful rightly place in Christ’s ministers, and to ensure that the guilty will be appropriately punished. He therefore gave to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a special competence in this matter, applicable for the whole Church, establishing a particular procedure to be followed (cfr.
Motu proprio Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela
of May 18, 2001).

As the Holy Father has affirmed on various occasions, the Holy See is spiritually united to the victims of abuse and to their families, and encourages particular concern for them on the part of the bishops, priests, and the whole Catholic community. This closeness is now once again confirmed through the approval of the present “Essential Norms," which will help to restore, wherever necessary, the trust of the faithful in their pastors, assuring at the same time the defense of the innocent and the just punishment of the guilty. The “Essential Norms" in their present formulation are intended to give effective protection to minors and to establish a rigorous and precise procedure to punish in a just way those who are guilty of such abominable offenses because, as the Holy Father has said, “there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." At the same time, by ensuring that the true facts are ascertained, the approved Norms protect inviolable human rights—including the right to defend oneself—and guarantee respect for the dignity of all those involved, beginning with the victims. Moreover, they uphold the principle, fundamental in all just systems of law, that a person is considered innocent until either a regular process or his own spontaneous admission proves him guilty.