For any decisions to be binding upon the bishops, they must pass by a 2/3rds vote and also receive the approval (recognition) of the Holy See. The debate is well underway among the bishops, and at least some of it in public.
Cardinal Wuerl promptly proposed a bishops only review panel in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter. This idea promptly met with objections. The proposal was not helped by the Wuerl saying that the report would go to either to the CDF or the Congregation of Bishops. Wuerl has a seat on both!
Bishop Scharfenberger of Albany promptly said that laity are essential bishops investigating bishops is not the solution. Rather laity must provide the leadership
What is needed now is an independent commission led by well-respected, faithful lay leaders who are beyond reproach, people whose role on such a panel will not serve to benefit them financially, politically, or personally. These will be people with a deep understanding of the Catholic faith, but without an axe to grind or an agenda to push. It will not be easy, but it will be worth every ounce of effort, energy, and candor we can muster.
Anchorage Archbishop Etienne has proposed a mixed group:
- The USCCB should immediately convene an ad hoc committee of the most respected leaders of our Conference – no more than seven (7) – to write a protocol to be placed before the body of bishops for review and approval as soon as possible.
- Part of this protocol would require the development of a National Review Board for accusations of sexual misconduct against bishops. The membership of this body would include the seven bishop members of the ad hoc committee, the Papal Representative to the United States as an ex officio member, and an equal number of lay representatives.
- This Review Board would examine all accusations against bishops and make their decisions and recommendations to the Holy See.
- As a means of clear transparency, this Review Board would make its recommendations public within 60 days of submission to the Holy See if no public action or response has been taken by the competent authority.
What might seem a simple question of who belongs on at review group is likely to be complicated by the question of what really happened, not only in McCarrick's case by also in the case of Bishop Nienstedt (read on):
Conservatives has been gloating over McCarrick much as liberals once gloated over the case of the Marciel, the head of the Legionnaires of Christ who was a conservative hero until his fall from grace was revealed.Rod Dreher (author of The Benedict Option) writes in The American Conservative that there is also a conservative Archbishop whose case deserves equal scrutiny, Archbishop Fails Upwards In Wine Country. He quotes a reader:
"Archbishop Nienstedt was forced out of office in 2015 for failing to properly handle sex abuse allegations. However, there were also allegations of homosexual activity with adults, including priests and seminarians. Documents released in 2016 revealed that the then-Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, not only quashed an investigation into Nienstedt’s alleged abuse of seminarians and priests, but also ordered investigators to destroy documents.
In other words, there is substantial evidence that Nienstedt was guilty of many of the same offenses as McCarrick, and that this was covered up at very high levels. No evidence has been brought forward, as far as I’m aware, that Nienstedt has been exonerated; he has just been allowed to retire in comfort to the California wine country, where he gets to rub shoulders with wealthy and powerful Catholics."So here we have a conservative Archbishop who is living it up at conservative events in Wine country after he has been removed for his extensive mishandling of sexual abuse cases in his diocese and who had an investigation of allegations of his own adult sexual abuse of seminarians quashed by the Apostolic Nuncio. The only way the Bishops are going to be able to put this behind them is to have a thorough transparent investigation of both the McCarrick and the Nienstedt cases. And that involves investigating the Holy See and its role in both cases since nothing was done in either case.
Thanks to Rocco Palmo who has be covering these developments on twitter: https://twitter.com/roccopalmo
There is a National Review Board -- the one established by the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People in 2002. If that's what they are thinking of giving the job or emulating, it won't do. Its charter is filled with "advise" and "consult," but the advice and consultation goes to the bishop. I would take more time that I have at the moment to run it down, but my impression is that the layfolk serving on the current NRB have not universally found their service worth their time.
ReplyDeleteWhen the watchmen are doing a lot of stealing, you can't set the watchmen to protect your property. And so on. There needs to be a board of layfolk, answerable only to the pope. They can be advised and consulted with by some bishops. Will be a good experience all around. Otherwise you'd get more of what you got.
Jack, great post.
ReplyDeleteCardinal Cupich also has weighed in and is in favor of laypersons having a prominent role.
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/08/07/cardinal-cupich-supports-investigation-mishandling-mccarrick-complaints?utm_source=Newsletters&utm_campaign=a3e17b46b1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_07_08_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0fe8ed70be-a3e17b46b1-58652245
One of the fundamental things the bishops have to figure out is: is it the bishops conference's job to investigate their own members (whether they do that with a panel of bishops, or somehow delegate it to an independent board), or is it the Holy See's job to investigate bishops?
I guess what is in scope for the bishops to investigate is: did all of their members comply with their Statement of Commitment? - because that is their own pledge, not something that was imposed on them by the Holy See or canon law. But: if it transpires that Archbishop X did not comply - say for the sake of discussion that he had received credible reports about McCarrick's activities with seminarians, but didn't inform the Nuncio - Archbishop X could take the position, "That Statement of Commitment is not canon law. It has no church-legal binding force. In fact, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. So I didn't keep the promise in the case of my good friend Uncle Ted? Oops, my bad. What's next on the agenda?" I don't know whether any actual bishop would take that position, but it's not inconceivable; there were individual bishops who didn't cooperate with the National Review Board that Tom mentions, and public shaming didn't seem to sway them.
The recent experience in Chile is that that conference wasn't able to police its members. The Holy See, after initially getting it badly wrong, now seems to be taking some corrective action (we hope).
For these reasons, I really think it's going to most effective if the Holy See does the investigating, and then pursues any church-legal action that comes out of the investigation. I don't say that lightly; even with Francis at the helm, the Holy See pretty much botched the Chilean situation, and there are other sexual-abuse fires springing up elsewhere around the world that the Holy See has yet to deal with effectively, so it may be that we have a right to be skeptical. But I'm sorry to say, I have even less confidence that the national conference will be able to police itself.
I would add: whatever the national conference sets up, it has to be all laypersons or mostly laypersons - clergy, and especially bishops - can't be allowed to run that show - and it has to be allowed to operate independently of national conference oversight. If it serves as an independent panel under the auspices of the Holy See, maybe that is okay.
Just initial thoughts. I'm very open to different and better ones.
"For these reasons, I really think it's going to most effective if the Holy See does the investigating, and then pursues any church-legal action that comes out of the investigation."
DeletePerhaps the key here is separation of powers, e.g. in our criminal justice system we have the police who do the investigating, then the prosecutors, and a judge and jury.
My suggestion is put the investigation entirely in the hands of the laity at the national level. A separate corporation with a board of laity that oversees independent lay investigators. Let all complaints about bishops, clergy and lay employees and volunteers go to them with a 1-800 number.
This corporation would publish an annual report giving statistics about complaints, investigations, etc.
Some investigations it would turn over to the police. Some investigations might go to bishops or others superiors for disciplinary action. In the case of bishops it would go to the Apostolic Nuncio.
However the annual report would list all the dispositions, and the whole investigative file would be made public if the lay board thought effective action was not being taken.
Nice to "see" you, Jack.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I don't know if it's even possible to get an honest and transparent investigation, no matter who is doing it. Obviously the hierarchy can't be trusted, all the way up the line. Hand-picked by bishops laity may not be able to do the job either, because they depend on the hierarchy for their information. The first two leaders of the Natl Review Board did the best they could. Two prominent and respected Catholics headed the National Review Board for abuse of kids, and both found the process to be anything but honest and transparent - Charles Keating and Anne Burke. As I recall, the Keating compared working with the bishops to working with the Mafia. Anne Burke was handpicked as a nice, conservative Catholic who wouldn't rock the boat the way Keating did. A "lady" of the Knights of Malta. Well, it turns out she was also honest, and so she left too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/us/refusing-to-recant-keating-resigns-as-church-panel-chief.html
The process was flawed from the start, as the review board had to depend on the honesty of the bishop to give them ALL the relevant files. They could not work on their own. The John Jay report found an incidence of abusing priests at roughly 4% as I recall - the same as the general population. Coincidently. However, when all files were accessed during court cases in Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere, the rate of abusing priests was double that reported by John Jay. Depending on the hierarchy to provide all the relevant information is a fool's errand.
The stories were made public by the secular media, and too many Catholics added the word "anti-Catholic" as a modifier to "secular media".
The bishops protected priests. Then they protected themselves for protecting priests.
Can you imagine how these men will circle the wagons to protect their own "brothers" who sexually harassed seminarians? Or abused minors years ago when they were parish priests with access to kids? As happened in Chile, as has happened all throughout the Catholic world at the highest levels.
I might add - it is likely that many, many records have been destroyed already. Just as the bishops apparently hid records from the National Review Board during the early years of the inquiry into the abuse of kids, they will double down on hiding the sins (and crimes) or high level clerics. I can just hear those shredders humming, in chanceries throughout the country, and maybe even in the world.
ReplyDeleteThe govt inquiry in Australia seemed to get to the bottom of things in ways that no board of Catholics - even if it includes laity - will ever do.
I agree that records disappearing, and non-cooperation from dioceses, would hamper an independent investigation.
DeleteOn the other hand, it seems possible to me that this type of an investigation may rely more on witness testimony and less on records than the investigations into the sexual abuse of minors. There doesn't seem to be an office or a department in the USCCB tasked with investigating accusations against bishops, so it's possible there is no central repository with damning documentation. But there are victims and witnesses with memories.
Jim, while there may not be as many records to hide or destroy as in the cases of abuse of children, I imagine there is still a paper trail - non-disclosure agreements, financial settlements, witness statements, meeting notes, etc. Unfortunately, trusting the hierarchy to produce ALL of the records is truly putting hope ahead of experience. They will hide stuff. They always do.
DeleteMcCarrick is in the news. But there were at least two bishops in Florida in the last 15 years who were replaced because of the reports of their sexual engagement with seminarians and young priests. A cardinal in Poland,one of JPII's friends, was also involved in the same activity. Of course, there is Chile, where the other bishops seem to have known, but kept their lips zipped. The notorious seminary in Austria, shut down because of the widespread numbers of sexual relationships between faculty and seminarians, and among seminarians, some of which were probably consensual. Not to mention the 40,000 porn images, many of children. The case of the Nuncio in the Dominican Republic (involving male prostitutes, not seminarians), more or less swept under the rug because Rome refused to return him to the DR to face trial (along with his priest assistant who procured boys for him). There are so many cases of sexual abuse of kids or harassment of adults, often seminarians, all over the world. It's not just a US problem. Then, of course, there is the rape and abuse of women religious, which seems less widespread, but was very real. See the America website for more on that.
The clerical class protects its own. And the higher up the abusing cleric is, the greater protection he seems to receive. I was shocked with the Dallas agreement, precisely because it did not mention any actions that would impact hierarchy. I waited for Rome to do something - of course, the main thing they did that made the news was whisk Law to Rome, away from the US legal system, where he enjoyed the perqs and honors of high office, all paid for by the people in the pews.
After a few years it became clear that nobody high up was going to do anything at all about bishops who protected priests, nor about bishops who abused others themselves.
So, on Sunday, I will pray with an Episcopal congregation, as I have for almost 10 years now.
"The govt inquiry in Australia seemed to get to the bottom of things in ways that no board of Catholics - even if it includes laity - will ever do."
ReplyDeleteYes ultimately we have to use the power of the state to control the bishops. It is unfortunate.
I think all tax exempt institutions need to have a threat of lost of tax exemption if they tolerate sexual abuse of children, e.g. failure to report.