Commission to review norms: priests welcome Vatican action, while abuse victims are critical - Church in Crisis

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 1, 2002 by John L. Allen, Jr.

Despite efforts by the U.S. bishops to avoid an air of crisis, the long-awaited response from Rome to their Dallas sex abuse norms has generated divisions that may prove difficult to resolve, both inside the Vatican and in the court of American Catholic opinion.

The response came in an Oct. 14 letter from Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, to Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, which said that changes would be necessary before Rome will sign off on the Dallas program.

In an Oct. 18 news briefing, Gregory listed the key issues, long familiar to observers:

* The role and powers of lay review boards;

* The definition of sexual abuse;

* Due process guarantees for accused priests.

The response, which was neither the outright rejection some in the Vatican wanted, nor the cautious approval many in the U.S. bishops' conference hoped for, means that for now the norms adopted in Dallas are not binding on American bishops. Where the norms conflict with the Code of Canon Law, for now canon law takes precedence.

The response was not a surprise. NCR first reported that the Vatican would have difficulties with Dallas documents June 14, the day of the bishops' vote, and in mid-September broke the story of the Vatican letter declining to grant legal recognition to the norms.

A "mixed commission," composed of four representatives from the Vatican and four American bishops, will try to hammer out a resolution before the full meeting of the U.S. bishops in Washington Nov. 11-14.

The men chosen to represent the Vatican for the commission are: Archbishop Julian Herranz, a Spaniard and the president of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts; Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, an Italian and secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, a Colombian serving as prefect of the Congregation for Clergy; and Archbishop Francesco Monterisi, an Italian and the secretary of the Congregation for Bishops.

U.S. prelates chosen for the commission are: Chicago Cardinal Francis George; San Francisco Archbishop William Levada; Rockford, Ill., Bishop Thomas Doran; and Bridgeport, Conn., Bishop William Lori.

George and Levada both assisted in the composition of a proposal to examine ways to oversee the implementation by the U.S. bishops of the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People."

For six years, Levada served in the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Lori currently serves on the U.S. bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse. Doran for eight years worked in the Roman Rota tribunal in the Vatican. He currently is a member of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court in the Vatican.

The norms have been awaiting vatican action since mid-June. From the beginning, it has been clear that many in the Vatican are troubled by the Dallas program. In general, officials in Rome worry that the American bishops went too far in the direction of summary justice for accused priests, and were too eager to abdicate their own responsibility for resolving the problem to outside agents, whether civil authorities or lay review boards.

The intra-Vatican debate, therefore, did not shape up primarily as pro-Dallas vs. anti-Dallas, but rather how hard an anti-Dallas line to take.

Vatican factions

One Vatican faction, led by Re, argued for a flexible approach, allowing the U.S. bishops to experiment with applying the norms between now and the review after two years fixed in Dallas. If the approach resulted in a number of well-founded appeals from suspended priests to Rome, this line of reasoning went, the problem could always be handled in church courts.

Indeed, Re actually favored a prudent silence rather than a public letter--at most, favoring a letter that merely promised careful consideration after the experimental period.

The approach was vintage Re, the most prominent of the so-called "Benelli's widows," meaning someone who owes his placement in the Roman curia to Cardinal Giovanni Benelli. The right-hand man of Pope Paul VI, Benelli was known for a subtle, flexible, quintessentially "Italian" approach to solving problems.

Pushing for a harder line were two of the men chosen for the commission, Castrillon and Herranz. Both men argued behind the scenes that the Dallas program has serious canonical flaws, and it serves no purpose to disguise what would eventually have to be a negative judgment.

Castrillon and Re are both widely viewed as leading candidates to be the next pope. Herranz is the highest-ranking member of Opus Dei to serve in the Roman curia.

In the end, Re's letter reflected a compromise between these two views. The opening paragraphs were full of praise of the American bishops, expressing "full solidarity with the bishops of the United States in their firm condemnation of sexual misdeeds against minors."

The letter went on, however, to cite "confusion and ambiguity" in the norms, to assert that both Dallas texts "contain provisions which in some aspects are difficult to reconcile with the universal law of the church," and to complain of "vague or imprecise" terminology that is "difficult to interpret."