‘Luther Was Right,’ Says Bishops’ Point Man
National Catholic Register
June 30-July 6, 2002
by WAYNE LAUGESEN
Register Correspondent
WASHINGTON — Bishops are facing unprecedented challenges to their authority in the wake of the sex-abuse scandals. Some of the heat is coming from their own lay commissioner.
At least seven grand juries across the country are focusing on allegations that some Catholic bishops covered up past sexual abuse by priests.
At the same time, Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating is promising to use his unprecedented new position with the U.S. bishops’ conference to help lay people remove bishops who might have looked the other way or transferred known priest-abusers.
Critics of this laity-driven approach warn that it is fundamentally at odds with the hierarchical nature of the Church and could leave the American bishops individually and collectively exposed to overreactions based on unbalanced public opinions.
In explaining to the Register his desire for more lay control over the Church, Keating endorsed the reasoning of Martin Luther, leader of the 16th century Protestant reformation. Keating, a Catholic and former prosecutor and FBI agent, heads a new national review board charged with overseeing the implementation of a national sexual-abuse charter adopted by American bishops.
“Remember, it was Martin Luther who suggested early in his efforts that the lay community get involved in reforming the Church so there would not be a collapse of faith by the faithful,” Keating said, answering critics who say laity boards should not seek removal of bishops.
“Unfortunately, in retrospective, Martin Luther was right,” he said. “Just think what positively could have occurred if lay people in the 16th and 15th centuries had been involved. None of us is a theologian, and every one of us [on the board] recognizes the authority of those who speak for the religious part of the Church. But the human part needs more lay involvement, to make sure these types of calamities don’t occur again.”
Keating’s comments came June 21 after he finished a two-day meeting with three other members appointed to the national review board. Keating was named chairman June 14 after bishops approved a policy charter that Mandates the reporting of all sexual abuse allegations to civil authorities and that will remove from public ministry all priests found to have sexually abused minors, even in the distant past.
Other review board members include Robert Bennett, a lawyer who represented President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones sex scandal; Justice Ann Burke of the Illinois Court of Appeals; and Michael Bland, a psychologist and former priest who was abused by a priest in his youth and helps the Archdiocese of Chicago counsel other abuse victims.
Keating said the committee of four has decided on seven other potential members and two alternates. They will recommend the appointments to Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“These people are geographically diverse. They are all practicing Catholics, and all are independent people not dependent upon the Church in any way for their livelihoods,” Keating said, explaining they would not have to fear financial retribution for their potential actions against bishops. “All are very successful lay people, and there would be no religious members.”
After approving the abuse charter June 14, the U.S. bishops approved norms to submit for approval by the Vatican. The norms establish some aspects of the charter as “particular law” — meaning exclusive to the United States — and would mandate that bishops appoint a laity review board for each American diocese.
“We have two charges,” Keating said. “One is to comprise a report analyzing what each diocese has done to punish and remove the people responsible for this conduct — and that would include prelates — and to examine how this occurred, which of course could include prelates as well. We hope, and what Bishop Gregory hopes, is that the local diocese review boards will consist of tough lay men and women who will examine the role of bishops and clergy, to make sure their mission is to pray, p-r-a-y, and not to prey, p-r-e-y.”
Keating said he was disappointed that the zero-tolerance policy enacted by bishops called only for the removal of “priests and deacons” from public ministry and not bishops.
“I wish the bishops had said all ‘clergymen’ instead of just priests and religious, but I think our charter is broad enough to cover the gamut and I think the independence and tough-mindedeness of laity will take this commission’s actions to the place it needs to go,” Keating said. “It may turn out no prelate was criminally or grossly negligent, but we don’t know yet.”
Pope’s Decision
After Keating spoke publicly about his desire to force culpable bishops to resign or get fired by Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia said he did not think that was the governor’s new charge.
“Whether a bishop resigns is an issue between that bishop and the Holy Father, not a review board,” Cardinal Bevilacqua told the Register.
As well, no provision exists in Church law for holding bishops accountable to any lay body for alleged failures in the execution of their episcopal duties. Regarding the discipline of bishops for violations of ecclesiastical law, the Code of Canon Law specifically states that no one other than the Pope or the Roman Rota, the Vatican’s court, can pass judgments. Canon 1405 states that the Pope serves as the sole judge of bishops “in penal cases,” while the Roman Rota serves as judge in less grave “contentious cases” involving bishops.
Prominent lay Catholics share Cardinal Bevilacqua’s concerns about Keating’s tough talk about bishops.
Robert Royal, leader of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., said Keating is feeding a misplaced, politically driven desire among a growing number of American Catholics to establish the Church as a democracy, in which popular opinion prevails. The Church is not a democracy, he explained, but a hierarchy that upholds moral standards that often stand in direct confrontation to the demands and desires of today’s secularized pop culture.
“Gov. Keating is suffering from ‘mission creep’ — I don’t see how the removal of bishops, or the targeting of bishops, can be the mandate of laity review boards,” said Royal, who is also a member of the group Catholics for Authentic Reform. (Register executive editor Tom Hoopes is also a member.) “The national bishops’ conference doesn’t have the authority to establish review boards with a mission like what Keating explains. A national conference of bishops cannot legislate for individual bishops. While bishops can agree to voluntarily adhere to national norms they establish for themselves, each bishop remains answerable only to Rome.”
Camille De Blasi, director of the Center for Life Principles in Redmond, Wash., and a member of Catholics for Authentic Reform, also criticized Keating’s comments.
“It’s irresponsible for laymen to go after bishops,” De Blasi said. “Bishops are our leaders. We as faithful have a responsibility to be obedient to them, to love them, to pray for them. That doesn’t mean we don’t point out where we think there have been mistakes and where there needs to be attention, and I hope Keating’s board will do that. However, it’s not the role of a layman to call for any bishop’s resignation. It’s God who calls bishops, not laymen.”
Royal called Keating a “great man” whom he’d like to see serve as vice president or attorney general for the United States. However, he said he’s shocked that Keating called on the wisdom of Martin Luther to justify efforts by the laity to seize more control over the Church.
“It’s not enlightening for a Catholic to cite a Protestant precedent,” Royal argued. “As we know from the history of the Reformation, what starts as reasonable reform, unless it’s kept in strict boundaries, can lead to chaos. I think at the end of the day what we want is not a plebiscite of bishops, not on this issue or other issues. With all due respect to the governor, there’s a ‘Protestantizing’ element in what he’s saying.”
Throughout history, Royal said, the will of the majority would have destroyed Christianity if religious leaders allowed it to prevail.
“When Moses comes down from Sinai and sees Jews worshipping the golden calf, he doesn’t turn around and say ‘Oh, I have to rethink my views on the Ten Commandments.’ And Jesus and Paul encountered all kinds of popular resistance,” Royal said. “There’s a counter-popular element that has to be preserved from whatever the majority is willing to say at any given moment. If we could just take a plebiscite from time to time and have a shifting opinion on what Christianity is, then we wouldn’t need Revelation.”
Death Penalty Dissenter
Other concerns about Keating’s appointment were raised by the group Catholics Against Capital Punishment, which cited 1999 comments by the Oklahoma governor that Pope John Paul II was “wrong” in his teachings against the death penalty. In response to those comments, Archbishop Eusebius Beltran of Oklahoma City issued a public letter of rebuke, saying that “by incorrectly stating the Church’s teaching on capital punishment, he [Keating] does a great disservice to all people.”
Catholics Against Capital Punishment also cited remarks Keating made Jan. 25 at a conference at the University of Chicago, where he commented about his continuing “battle” over capital punishment with Archbishop Beltran and Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, Okla.
“I kind of hide under the bed when they start firing the big guns,” Keating said. “I’m waiting to go to Mass on Sunday and be denounced from the pulpit.”
Keating said he hopes concerns about his tough talk and prosecutorial zeal might be tempered by the fact that Clinton attorney Robert Bennett was among the first three appointments to the board. But Bennett’s appointment has itself raised eyebrows because he boldly defended Clinton in one of the former president’s most-notorious sex scandals.
Although Keating and Bennett haven’t worked together before, the governor said he is a close friend of Bennett’s brother, former Education Secretary William Bennett. Furthermore, Keating taught CCD to Robert Bennett’s daughter.
“One thing the appointment of Robert Bennett says is that we will be fact-driven, and we will not run a pogrom against priests or bishops who did nothing wrong other than, perhaps, exercise poor judgment,” Keating said. “And I think that’s important. Robert Bennett is a tough trial lawyer, a criminal defense attorney. If I had a problem, I’d hire Robert Bennett, too, because he’s very good.”
Keating knows his talk about bringing bishops to justice has stirred a controversy. Years down the road, he said, he hopes the national board will be viewed as a success story for the Catholic Church and other American institutions grappling with sexual abuse involving adults and minors.
“Although it hasn’t resulted in the same level of publicity, we know that other institutions have this problem and in many cases it’s probably worse,” Keating said. “Although most Catholic prelates are wonderful human beings, and most Catholic priests are wonderful and dedicated and conscientious human beings, we will soon have a protocol in place to remove any criminal predators among their ranks. We need to figure out how to do that, and then to the extent that we can be of help to other institutions, we want to do that.”
Wayne Laugesen is based in Boulder, Colorado.
