U.S. Catholic Bishops Back Minor Changes to Child-Protection Charter

U.S. Catholic bishops voted Thursday to approve minor changes to their child protection charter amid several new scandals over bishops who have failed to follow it, after a key advisory committee warned that without more clear, direct responses, they risked undoing their progress on the issue.

On Tuesday, the bishops' conference was urged to "speak publicly and provide clear, accurate and honest information," said the report from the National Advisory Council, a demographically representative advisory board of 45 Catholics from across the U.S.

The warning was delivered by Bishop William Skurla, the board's liaison to the bishops, at their summer meeting in Bellevue.

The council said that, "without such information and renewed zeal to stay the course, the reputation of the charter and the image of the church are at risk."

"Dramatic reforms are needed to better protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded," the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said.

The charter was drafted in 2002 at the height of public outrage over bishops who had failed to remove priests who had sexually abused minors.

It says no priest who has sexually abused a minor may remain in ministry, that a review board of lay experts must advise each bishop on response to accusations, that bishops must provide compassionate support to victims and provide extensive training on the detection and prevention of child sexual abuse.

It mandates outside audits of each diocese's implementation of those policies and established a National Review Board, whose members are primarily lay experts, to oversee all of this.

To give the charter teeth, the bishops arranged for the Vatican to give its rules the force of canon law.

But, it contains no penalty for bishops who failed to remove abusers or to follow the charter.

"We don't have any ability or authority to sanction anyone," said Bishop Blase Cupich, chairman of the Bishops' Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People.

In Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali is under heavy fire for mishandling accusations against dozens of priests, after a grand jury said 37 remained in ministry despite credible allegations.

In Kansas City, Mo., Bishop Robert Finn failed to act on complaints from a parish school that a priest was displaying disturbing, pedophile-like behavior.

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., has refused to allow the audits required by the charter, with no apparent reaction from the Vatican. Notably, the bishops' committee that oversees the charter rejected more than two dozen proposed amendments from Bishop Bruskewitz, who argued that the charter isn't binding on any bishop.

The committee replied that the charter's rules were approved by the Vatican, which recently required all dioceses worldwide to adopt similar measures.

But this review of the charter was scheduled more than a year ago only to make sure it was in line with new Vatican documents, Cupich said.

There were no major proposed revisions because the charter works well in most of the nation's nearly 200 dioceses, he said.

"It is where the charter isn't followed correctly ... that we get into difficulties," he said.

The victim advocacy group BishopAccountability.org had proposed specific changes to the charter, including requiring the diocesan review boards to consider all accusations, not just those that bishops choose to forward to them, and requiring bishops to send all allegations, no matter how flimsy, to the civil authorities.

The advocacy group also wanted bishops to at least temporarily remove a priest from ministry as soon as an allegation is made, rather than wait until a preliminary investigation is completed.

At least a few bishops believe the charter is already too harsh on priest perpetrators.

Retired Archbishop Francis Hurley, emeritus of Anchorage, Alaska, said, "I have received questions from a number of people (asking) 'don't we believe in forgiveness?'"

When not online, I use my trusty Douay Rheims English translation of the Latin Vulgate.

And they haven't excommunicated you as a schismatic? [/poor attempt at humor]

All kidding aside, if indeed you reject higher criticism, evolution, Biblical errancy, etc., why are these never topics of your posts? Why is it you talk about everything under the sun except for the Biblical issues and never rebuke the very active, very "loud" Catholics on this forum who are always happy to claim "our church, unlike the inbred morons down South, accepts evolution and knows the Bible isn't always true?"

I know there are a few Catholics on this forum who believe in both total Biblical inerrancy and in young earth creationism. But one thing they all have in common is that they never post much on those issues. They seem happy to allow the evolutionists and higher critics stand as the public face of the Catholic Church and instead spend all their time on other issues.

I don't get it, mas. I was a member of the Catholic Church for six years and I simply couldn't stomach the higher critical attitude I found everywhere. I tried to be loyal (though you'll probably dismiss that claim), but the psychic pain was too much. My co-religionists were too different from me in culture, in emphasis, in absolutely everything. However intellectually I tried to be Catholic, culturally I was still very much one of those awful heretics. The old things still mattered to me, much more than the new Catholic doctrines I had accepted, simply because they had been there longer and were (to me) more obviously true. If Catholicism is so ethnoculturally bound that it can't be appropriated by everyone, including Bible-thumpers, then it is simply not a "universal religion."

Even if I had managed to remain in the Catholic Church years ago I don't think my membership would have survived the Catholics on Free Republic. Most Catholic FReepers are over-intellectual, stuck up snobs with apparently no tinge of human sympathy for lesser-endowed beings than themselves (other than the illiterate peasants from the few approved ethnic groups that Catholic intellectuals like to whip out of their pocketbooks every so often to show how "beautiful" their religion is). They are also hypocrites, accepting uncritically any and all miracles that Protestants don't understand while dismissing almost every supernatural event in the bible which Catholics and Protestants allegedly hold in common. What's up with that? Seriously?

Most Catholic FReepers aren't merely people who disagree with a different theology but bigots who despise an entire ethnoculture--often in the exact same words the liberals use to degrade rural Southerners. Then they turn around and, like every good liberal victim group, scream "bigotry!" "nativism!" and "know nothing!" at the slightest criticism.

All that strange stuff would have been a little easier to hold on to if I could have been assured that I was merely adding to my previous beliefs in Biblical inerrancy. Instead the message I got was that I was exchanging beliefs--Adam and Eve out, Mary in.

So what is it? What hinders you from objecting to your more outrageous co-religionists? What prevents you from at least witnessing to the fact that not all Catholics are evolutionists or higher critics when the majority of Catholic FReepers are pushing those two beliefs as Catholic distinctives?

A couple months ago there was a Catholic FReeper whom I deeply disagreed with but whom I respected precisely because he would challenge other Catholics on these issues. For his troubles he was called "anti-Catholic," a "Protestant," and eventually hounded off this forum by other Catholics. Is evolution and higher criticism so unimportant to conservative Catholics that anyone who makes a noise about them is automatically suspect?

Every Catholic on this forum should be ashamed of the way verdugo was treated. But I guess he was an "ignorant nativist know-nothing" because he stood alone against the Catholics on this forum who either fight openly for the idea that not everything G-d says is true or else who keep shameful silence.

Please, before you respond with a lot of name-calling, try to actually answer my questions. I still want to understand, and so far I don't.

FR is not a good place for in-depth Catholic traditionalist critique of modernist “liberal Catholicism” or semi-modernist “conservative Catholicism.” Traditional radical rejection of the world is so shocking in the current milieu that it could easily draw the zot. Angel Queen is an alternative for that kind of discussion.

I debate more liberal Catholics on occasion but have participated less in the religious threads lately because many posters seem to recycle old arguments without trying to understand or progress. I do not remember seeing Catholics represent evolution and high criticism as Church teaching. Ping me next time you see a post like that I will respond, time permitting.

It does not sound like you experienced real traditional Catholicism. Catholic doctrine and the traditional mass have remained largely unchanged for almost 2000 years. The experiments tried since the 1960’s are not really Catholic or Catholic-lite at best. SSPX websites provide a good summary of the current (but temporary) crisis.

The Catholic Church is divinely instituted to “withstand the gates of Hell” until the end of the world. Many professed Catholics are currently misled by counterfeit doctrine, but the traditional faith remains inviolate. Novelty cannot overturn infallible doctrine and organic custom established for millennia. Church tradition is being sustained by hundreds of thousands of Catholics throughout the world until the larger body is fully restored.

You're telling me. Verdugo got chased off the forum, and it wasn't the Protestants who did it. I've never read such nasty vitriol against an alleged "co-religionist." He was called a "Protestant" and "anti-Catholic" simply because he literally meant that Catholic doctrine doesn't change. The so-called "conservative Catholics" on FR should be ashamed of themselves.

I do not remember seeing Catholics represent evolution and high criticism as Church teaching. Ping me next time you see a post like that I will respond, time permitting.

I'll try to remember to ping you to such posts in the future (beli neder).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.