Religious order abusers and dioceses

Last week's release by victims' attorneys of the names of alleged priest abusers in the Chicago Archdiocese brought into sharper focus the question of religious order priests doing diocesan work, and how abuse complaints against the religious order priests have been handled.

Diocesan and religious order clergy

Remember Richard Malone?  He is, still today, the bishop of the Buffalo, NY diocese.  I say "still today" because, when we checked in on him several times last year, he was under fire for the way his diocese had handled abuse cases.   If you recall, the heat on him was turned up to incandescent when his personal assistant blew the whistle on "60 Minutes".   The diocese previously had released the names of 42 priests against whom abuse accusations had been substantiated; but the bishop's assistant had stated in her "60 Minutes" interview that she had stumbled across file boxes in a closet that contained records on accusations against more than 100 other priests, not previously made public.

After that high-profile public-relations disaster, the diocese issued some additional information.  The data in question broke down as follows:

• 42 diocesan priests had already been identified by the Buffalo diocese as having substantiated accusations against them

• 36 additional priests with accusations against them (not previously identified by the diocese) are religious order priests

• 66 priests who already are dead also have a single complaint against them

So, adding those numbers together, it appears that the "correct" number of priests in the Buffalo diocese, over a period of decades, who have accusations against them, is not 42 but rather 144* (or such was the case at the end of 2018; I don't know whether there have been further developments since then).

Why would a bishop list diocesan priests with substantiated instances of abuse, but not religious order priests who are working in his diocese?  The response from the Chicago Archdiocese to the list of accused priests released by the victims' lawyers, which I highlighted in a post a few days ago, provides the rationale:

Dioceses and religious orders are separately governed entities in the Roman Catholic Church. Bishops govern dioceses; religious superiors govern religious orders. The bishop selects, trains, and supervises diocesan priests. The religious orders select, train, and supervise their priests. The diocesan and religious order priests often do similar work, but each group is responsible to its own chain of authority (Canon 586). Disagreements between a bishop and a religious superior are referred to the Holy See for resolution. 

A bishop and a religious superior work cooperatively such as when a bishop grants faculties (a license) for a religious priest to work in a diocesan institution, such as a parish (Canon 678). Nevertheless, the religious order priest is still under the authority of his religious superior. Similarly, a bishop may revoke a religious order priest’s faculties (a license) to work in the diocese. In that eventuality, the supervision and management of the order priests also remains the responsibility of his religious superior. In brief, a diocesan priest is the responsibility of the diocese and a religious priest is the responsibility of the religious order. 

If the Archdiocese of Chicago receives an allegation that a religious priest has engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor, the archdiocese reports it to the civil authorities, publicly withdraws the priest’s faculties to work in the archdiocese, and refers the matter to his religious superior. 

Religious superiors have the same obligation and responsibility as bishops to adhere to the terms set forth in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

On one level, I think this is a helpful and clarifying statement.  I don't doubt that there are many Catholics and others who have a vague understanding that there are religious-order priests working in some parishes and schools (and other Catholic institutions like nursing homes), but how those religious-order clergy relate to the bishop, and how they differ from "regular" diocesan priests, probably hasn't been thought about very much, nor fully understood.  

It turns out that the formal structure of the church is different, and arguably more complex and decentralized, than many people probably realize.  Many of us, mentally, probably think of the pope as the "CEO" with the bishops as "branch managers".  Or maybe the pope as "president", with the bishops as "governors".  In point of fact, neither paradigm, on its own merits, perfectly matches the reality of the institution's governance; and neither paradigm takes into account the added complication of overlaying the diocesan structure with religious orders, which (usually) aren't tied to specific geographies and aren't directly answerable to the "branch manager" bishops.  

Different ways of life, different governance processes

Once the distinction between diocesan clergy and religious orders is understood, the American documents that I've thought of as being foundational for the church's management of the abuse crisis,  the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, and its accompanying Essential Norms for Diocesan/Eparchial Policies Dealing with Allegations of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Priests or Deacons are seen in a new light.  Those documents were the products of the American bishops' meeting in Dallas in 2002 to deal with the then-burgeoning sexual abuse crisis spurred by the Boston Globe's reporting of the Boston Archdiocese's mishandling of abuse allegations.  In light of the diocesan/religious order distinction, I was struck by the number of times the formula "dioceses/eparchies" is used in provisions throughout those two documents.  The purpose of that term would seem to be to limit the scope of those rules and regulations to diocesan clergy only.  In other words, the laws and structures put in place at the Dallas meeting - diocesan review boards, the national review boards, and so on - don't apply to religious orders.  (Except - I think - to the extent that members of those religious orders are doing public ministry, such as acting as parish pastors or high school teachers, within a diocese.  Someone with more church-legal savvy than I would need to clarify that point.)  My reading of the Charter and Essential Norms is that the provisions in those documents apply directly only to diocesan priests and deacons. 

This distinction is key to understanding why abuse by members of religious orders seems to call for more attention than it's generally received.  Religious order clergy aren't subject to the same rules and regulations.  That's manifest in the part of the Chicago Archdiocese's statement that I reproduced above.  According to the Archdiocesan statement, when it receives an accusation against a religious order priest, it does the following three things:

• It reports it to the civil authorities (presumably the police and the Department of Children and Family Services)
• It withdraws the priest's faculties to work in the archdiocese
• It refers the matter to his religious superior, i.e. his supervisor within the religious order to which he belongs

It's interesting what isn't on that list: it doesn't say that accusations against religious order clergy are referred to the Archdiocese's office of child protection, nor its Independent Review Board, nor its archbishop.  Instead, the Archdiocese does what it's able to do under church law: it revokes the religious order priest's faculties, which disqualifies him from further public ministry in the diocese.  Then it looks to the religious order to handle the problem cleric.  (Nor does the Archdiocesan statement say that it informs the local faith community of the allegation.  I hope that's an inadvertent omission from the statement, rather than a gap in the process; I'll say a bit more below about the implications of these processes for the local faith community.)

So what does a religious order do when one of its members is accused and gets its faculties revoked by a diocese?  To answer that question, it's helpful to know how religious orders have tried to address the crises.  In 2002, the same year the American bishops met in Dallas,  the organization of leaders of male religious orders in the US, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM), had its own meeting, in Philadelphia.  That group pledged the following:

• It agreed on some common principles for how to handle allegations against members of its constituent religious orders, and to provide pastoral care for victims, as well as educate its members and the people they serve
• Individual orders would establish their own independent review boards, with provisions similar to those of dioceses, e.g. the majority of boards members should be laypersons
• The CMSM would have its own national review board to establish and maintain accountability

The CMSM also established a program, called Instruments of Hope and Healing, that would disseminate best practices and accredit orders who meet standards for child protection.  That program is run by a third-party organization, Praesidium Religious Services.

In 2013, the CMSM issued a statement entitled Instruments of Hope and Healing: Eleven Years of Work and Reflection by United States Male Religious on the Tragedy of Sexual Abuse within the Catholic Church.  That document notes a couple of things that are pertinent to our discussion here:

• Something I knew already, but  hadn't thought about in regard to the sexual abuse crisis: quite a few members of religious orders aren't clergy at all; they're religious brothers.  Those members of religious orders aren't directly subject to the Dallas Charter and Essential Norms, which apply only to clergy even when the religious brothers are engaged in public ministry within a diocese (as when they teach at a high school in the diocese).  Nonetheless, institutes of religious brothers have agreed to be bound by the Instruments of Hope and Healing program, which means that, in theory, they're holding themselves to the same accreditable standards as religious orders of priests

• Members of religious orders who have substantiated allegations against them remain in the order.  "While any member of our institutes who had ever had a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse had been removed from ministry, religious institutes of men operate under different provisions of Canon Law. These provisions require that religious institutes not expel members who had abused, if the abuser showed repentance, empathy for those victimized, and a willingness to accept intense supervision in community and permanent removal from ministry.  Religious institutes needed to find fraternal ways to professionally and intensely supervise abusers who fulfilled those criteria. They would keep offenders within their communities using structures which ensured the protection of children. For the leadership of these religious institutes this seemed to be a more responsible option than dismissing unsupervised members into society with the increased risk of the re-abuse of minors."  (This quote is from the Eleven Years document referenced above.)

Where dioceses and orders converge: the People of God

It seems the distinction between diocese (and eparchies) on the one hand, and religious orders on the other, is critical to understanding the extent of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy in the United States.  We've seen that at least some dioceses are publicly reporting only those instances of abuse allegedly perpetrated by diocesan clergy.  To be sure, some religious orders also are making public the names of their members with substantiated allegations against them.  But the orders are doing this on their own, without coordinating the communication closely with dioceses.   This means that reporters and members of the faithful who wish to get a comprehensive picture of abuse in a particular diocese can't count on the diocesan website to be a "one-stop shop".  Unless a diocese includes both diocesan and religious order offenders on its website, a person seeking the information in question needs to know where else to look, because the diocesan website will provide only a partial picture.

A consumer of this information would need to know which religious orders operate (and/or formerly had operated) in a diocese to know which websites to check.  Religious orders, by and large, aren't bound by geographic territory, so an order or province of an order (or abbey, or ... each order has its own organizational structure) that publishes the details of its offender members may not organize its listing in a way that makes it clear which diocese offenders worked in.

For example: I checked the website of St. Meinrad Archabbey, a Benedictine abbey in Indiana that has supplied parish priests to a parish in Chicago.  The site lists the names of St. Meinrad priests with allegations against them, but doesn't state where the abuse took place.  A viewer would have no way of knowing, based on the information supplied at that site, whether or not any of the abuse happened in a Chicago parish or school setting.

On the whole, it would be helpful for the people of God, whose well-being should be the focus of all child-protection endeavors across the church, for dioceses to publicize comprehensive lists of offenders with substantiated allegations against them, whether the offenders in question were diocesan or religious, and whether they were clergy, religious brothers (or sisters), or laypersons.

This imperative is strengthened when we consider that, even though a religious order like the Benedictines or the Dominicans runs a parish or a school in a diocese, the people that they serve don't "belong" to the Benedictine or Dominican order.  They belong to the bishop and the diocese.  The orders are in the bishop's territory doing public ministry by the bishop's permission.  Those people quite rightly look to the bishop to protect them, even when it is a religious-order priest who lives in the local parish rectory.  

As the number of priests continues to decline in dioceses in the United States, we can expect bishops to lean more heavily on religious order priests to supplement the numbers of diocesan priests with public ministry assignments.  For the sake of the people they serve, diocesan bishops must be transparent about all abuse in their diocese, whether it was committed by a diocesan cleric or a member of a religious order.

* Regarding the correct number of offenders in the Buffalo diocese: I put the word "correct" in quotes because it's not clear that these three categories (diocesan priests; religious order priests; dead priests) are apples-to-apples: the first two categories (diocesan priests and religious order priests) are those with substantiated accusations against them; but for the 66 Buffalo priests who are dead, the news account I read doesn't state whether or not those accusations are substantiated.  And there could be accusations against priests in the first two categories (including allegations against other priests whose names have not yet been publicly identified) which have not been substantiated.  

What is an unsubstantiated accusation?  It could mean any of several things: it could mean that there is some evidence but not enough to meet the standard of "substantiated" (the definition of which, for the Buffalo Diocese, is not known to me); it could mean that there is evidence, some of which supports the accusation and some of which contradicts it; it could mean that there is no evidence at all other than the accusation; it could even mean that it's a patently false accusation.  Perhaps there are other possibilities.  

I mention all this because ultimately, what we want to know is, "Did the abuse actually happen?  Was this person abused as a child?"  It's not always possible to answer that question with certainty - especially when answering it requires that we delve far into the past.