Could it possibly be? After all this time, do you think they got the message? Will the US bishops finally make themselves credible regarding their response to the Scandal and demand accountability from their fellow bishops? Maybe.
The U.S. bishops and the Vatican are discussing whether disciplinary action should be taken against bishops who moved child-abusing priests from parish to parish, said the head of the U.S. bishops’ conference.
Of course, the very first bit of spin that follows that claim is the standard line of “Hey, don’t blame us, we were just following the recommendations of the mental health community who said that guys who engage in the (sinful) behavior, oops, I mean “boundary violation”, of having sex with kids can be cured by going to a treatment center and being strapped onto a penile plethysmograph and watching pornography.” (No really, that’s what they used at those treatment centers.)
“Now we know differently,” says Bishop William Skylstad. Funny, but all the mental health professionals I’ve talked to or read about who didn’t have a pro-gay bias knew it too, and knew back in the 80s.
So what type of disciplinary actions are we talking about?
Bishop Skylstad said the Vatican already has taken action against Cardinal Bernard F. Law by accepting his early resignation as head of the Boston Archdiocese.
And he was then given a cushy job in Rome at St. Mary Major Basilica with a nice apartment, a generous stipend, and a staff. As far as disciplinary action goes, it’s not too strenuous. He parachuted out of the pressure cooker of Boston and into the dolce vita of Rome.
What can they really do to a bad bishop?
Technorati Tags: bishops, Catholic, scandal, sex-abuse, USCCB, vatican
Well, I didn’t say he was a “kingmaker” although I do hear other people claiming that. But it is a nice cushy retirement. My point is that it’s not punishment. We should all be so lucky to be punished that way.
What can the USCCB do?
As you point out Dom – not much, really. I don’t think a ‘Public Censure’ would work. Then we would be in the situation of the Anglican Church with public squabbling among assorted bishops. When someone like Ab. Weakland could thumb his nose at Vatican pronouncements, do you think he would have paid any more attention to a USCCB edict?
But what might work is a small disciplinary group charged with reviewing cases and making recommendations (of censure or removal…) to Rome. I would say no more than three bishops and ones known to be ‘above the fray’, as it were. My choices would be Ab. Burke, Bp. Bruskiewicz and Bp. Vasa.
I don’t see it happening – but we can hope…
Rome cannot be exempted from culpability in this. Putting the burden on the bishop’s committee if it is not really in a position to act is just a fancy way of passing the buck. Additionally the three bishops that GOR has named are about the only available choices that could be depended upon to be honest. Would the rest get on the disipline wagon or would they stonewall it? My bet is on the latter.
I recall that evidence was discovered implicating John Paul II in recommending a cover-up. Either that evidence was mistaken or Rome bears the bulk of responsibility for this mess, and thus has the burden of cleaning it up in spite of the fact that doing so might undermine ecumenical relations with the Orthodox.
As this drags on and on, we are moving from what we thought was an unprecedented scandal to what is looking more and more like a sordid commonplace reality.
On the one hand the bishops should have known better and not been so willing to copy the way secular society was handling similar cases(especially in the public schools) at the same time. On the other hand we have Christ’s words to forgive 7 times 70 times—which certainly would make it seem to a bishop that the way secular society was handling things was something to be emulated. Only God knows if a bishop was avidly, and with sheer negligence moving priests around not giving a damn about harm to future victims.
The only change has been with the psychiatrists who used to say it would do far more damage to make things public than was already done—And the lawyers who discovered they can get more money by going after the Church because the Church (intimidated by the anti-Catholic media) won’t defend herself. Yet our legal system is called the “adversary system.” That is because in court you are in a non-violent prize fight. And if you do not defend yourself with all tools available—you get knocked to the matt every time—and that is where the Church has landed every time for not defending herself in our adversarial system. Other countries have “truth-seeking” legal systems. In situations like this the Church would be far better off. As it is the Church is just a sitting duck for unscrupulous, rapacious lawyers.
The reality is that what Cardinal Law did (or didn’t do) was probably much less than what some others did on a smaller scale. His problem is that it all exploded in his diocese and that there were a lot of the molesters. And the way the victims and their families were dealt with was shameful. You have to keep in mind that this slow-motion train wreck played out in the media here on a daily basis for months and years.
But if we’re looking to compare severity of malfeasance, there other bishops I’d put higher on the scale: Mahony, Imesch, McCormack are three off the top of my head. Certainly those who allegedly abused other themselves are worse. I’m thinking, for example, of Ziemann and Connell.
What kind of punishment should a disciplined bishop get? A period of penitence in a monastery would be nice. Stripped of honors and ceremonials and the perqs of office, acting as a simple monk, slopping pigs and pulling weeds or cleaning cells. That would be a good start.
I’ve seen estimates of Law’s stipend too, but no official figures.
Poor unsuspecting contemplatives in these monasteries you keep talking about don’t deserve to be bombarded with criminals and perverts. Please stop recommending it!!
If you want to send these men off to think about their sins where they won’t get into more trouble with kids, jail is the place. They belong in the slammer.
No one’s talking about the molesters themselves.
Michigan, do a little research on those contemplatives and you might be less inclined to pity them.
A greater concern if a monastery “sentence” were to be issued would be the conditions in the monastery itself. Most of the exposure, most of the scandal, has revolved around the dioceses. For some reason the orders have escaped scrutiny. During the course of these revelations several people have pointed out that this is an error that needs to be rectified. To the best of my knowledge it has not been done, nor is there a plan to do it.
I do not like the idea of imprisonment for a priest. No matter what he has done, he is still an image of Christ because of his ordination. What’s more, child molesters fare worse in prison than other prisoners do. I’m not suggesting that a predatory priest deserves special consideration on his own merits, far from it. But merely on the merits of his ordination and the fact that he acts in personna Christi, some consideration must be given to his state.
Sending a cooperative bishop to a monastery to do penance is an appealing resolution provided that monastery is above board. Certainly he should not remain in office or be given a new position of authority or visibility.
Personally I have a hard time placing trust in any bishop at this point.
It does seem that the Vatican is willing to yank a bishop if the Conference is united against him. I’m thinking here of the Austrian “conservative” bishop with the lavender seminary who got himself retired.
The USCCB has no juridical authority whatsoever. None. The bishops cannot be brought to heel by it. It is hypocritical in the extreme for Bishop Bruskiewicz to be harassed about non-compliance with some stupid rule, when many of the rest of the bishops are guilty of REAL moral offenses, some of them huge REAL moral offenses.
Carrie, I think that ordination should not bar imprisonment if the ordained is a criminal. On the contrary, the authority that a sexual offender priest has makes his crime worse, much worse. My only regret is that they can’t get them laicized fast enough.
Carrie, I know there is trouble in the religious orders. Many of them are a huge mess. But even though there is much corruption, there are still many good contemplative monks, just like there are still good parish priests, and they don’t deserve to have to live in community with perverts and criminals. I don’t think you realize what a creep like the ones we’re describing might be able to do to a closed monastic community……