Catholic bishops again vow reform

Christian Century, July 12, 2003

THE NATION'S Catholic bishops ended their recent summer meeting with renewed promises to purge sexually abusive priests from the church. One year after they adopted sweeping reforms aimed at removing abusers from public ministry, the bishops said they had not wavered in their policies, despite complaints from victims' groups that the bishops have stonewalled investigators and kept victims at arm's length.

"In all my years in the conference, I've never seen bishops so focused and so determined and so filled with desire to deal with this crisis," Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony said on June 21. Earlier that week he raised questions about a survey that aims to tabulate the number of abusive priests and their victims.

In a later development, judgments against some priests in California fell victim to a U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 decision on June 26. The high court overturned a 1994 state law that had retroactively extended the criminal statute of limitation for sex crimes. The California law had required substantial corroborating evidence, but Justice Stephen Breyer. writing for the majority, said, "We believe that this retroactive application of a later-enacted law is unfair."

Some priests awaiting trial were released from jail within days of the ruling, and Los Angeles County prosecutors said 10 of its 11 pending cases involving priests would be dismissed. Another law passed last year by the California legislature permitted civil suits against alleged priest offenders in such older cases, but attorneys say civil judgments are hard to win without a criminal conviction.

The bishops, stunned by the resignations of Phoenix Bishop Thomas O'Brien after a fatal hit-and-run accident and former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating as head of an oversight panel, spent much of the week trying to do damage control as the abuse crisis continued to overshadow their efforts to tackle other issues.

The nation's leading victims' group, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, demonstrated outside the bishops' hotel throughout the three-day meeting and held its own convention 14 blocks away. SNAP leaders say they have been ignored by the bishops, and that the prelates are still looking for loopholes in their own policies.

"What I want a bishop to say is, I'm doing X, Y and Z, not because I have to because of the [mandated policies], not because I'm afraid I'll be hauled into court, not because my defense attorney thinks it would be a good idea,'" said SNAP national director David Clohessy.

The bishops resolved their problems with the survey that they authorized a year ago. The bishops of California, led by Mahony, objected to certain parts of the survey because of concerns over state privacy laws. After meeting with the survey's directors from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the California bishops agreed to cooperate.

The bishops' president, Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Illinois, took pains to sooth relations between the bishops and a 12-member National Review Board. Keating resigned on June 16 after he compared, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the delaying tactics of some bishops to the Mafia. Mahony shot back, saying Keating's comment was "off the wall."

Speaking to reporters, Gregory said relations between the bishops and the board are in good condition.