Bishops urge 'zero tolerance' of abuse

After weeks of internal hand-wringing, a committee of top Catholic officials in the United States has come out with a tough policy on sexual abuse that promises "zero tolerance" on cases in the future and conveys an apology for incidents in the past.

The draft recommendation by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (UCCB), released Wednesday, goes further in addressing the problem than many in the church had expected and perhaps some in the Vatican had wanted. But it still doesn't assuage all of the concerns of abuse victims and many parishioners in the US who have been urging broader reform in the church.

Nonetheless, analysts say the draft charter, if adopted at a meeting of bishops in Dallas next week, should help restore the confidence of some of those disaffected with a church undergoing its biggest crisis in modern history, depending on how rigorously the recommendations are carried out.

"This is a pretty tough report," says the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of America magazine, a Catholic weekly. "It puts the victim in first place. It's got concrete procedures to make sure these things don't happen again, and lay involvement in supervising how it's done."

Under the "Draft Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," the bishops offer an apology both for the criminal action of priests and the mishandling by bishops of sex abuse cases. In addition to pledging to defrock all priests who commit acts in the future, the charter calls for reporting all allegations to civil authorities.

The policy also commits to "openness" and establishes procedures for accountability at the diocesan and national levels. The involvement of lay Catholics is called for on review boards at both levels. An Office for Child and Youth Protection is to be created at the USCCB in Washington, which would produce an annual report based on audits in each of the country's dioceses.

"At first blush, the document appears to address most of the issues that American Catholics are concerned with," says Chester Gillis, chairman of the theology department at Georgetown University. "The one sticking point might be the issue of the single offense and whether or not that will be satisfactory to the public."

The report stopped short of zero tolerance in regard to past cases. Instead it says that defrocking would be requested for pedophiles and for any priest with more than one act of abuse against a minor. This leaves the door open for keeping priests who may have one past offense, but have demonstrated since then that they're not a danger.

Victims' groups are not convinced by what they have seen of the report. "Where's the accountability?" asks David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "And, even if these are adopted in Dallas, nothing makes them binding on any bishop or religious order."

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