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Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of the bishops' conference, delivered a dramatic address in which he unreservedly blamed the bishops for the greater part of this catastrophe, and apologized to victims and others. He issued an extraordinary call for abusive priests, and even bishops, who had not been identified yet to come forward to do so, for the sake of justice and their own souls. Two liberal Catholic intellectuals — R. Scott Appleby of Notre Dame, and Commonweal editor Margaret O'Brien Steinfels — spoke by invitation before the gathering of bishops, and told them that the crisis was largely their fault. And several abuse victims, in testimony so excruciating it brought tears from the stony faces of some bishops in the audience, told their harrowing stories, and urged the bishops to fix the problem, at long last. Late Thursday night, it became clear from scuttlebutt, including a comment made by Cardinal Francis George to a reporter, that the bishops were going to pass a tight zero-tolerance policy, with no exceptions for abusers, period. And yet, despite all the encouraging words, there remains tremendous skepticism that any of it will amount to much. There may be more awareness among some of the non-episcopal observers here about what's absent from this conference than what's present. Victims lawyer Sylvia Demarest, who won the $119 million verdict against the Diocese of Dallas in the Rudy Kos case, said on Thursday that the proposal being considered was an "improvement over past policy," but still "extremely negligent." "It does nothing about prevention," she said. "They know very well that 75 to 80 percent of victims won't come forward, and if they do come forward, it won't be until after a number of years. If they wait for victims to come forward before addressing the problem, they will have let a lot of abuse happen." Demarest said the bishops ought to draft a code of conduct for priests regarding relations with children and young people, and that the Catholic laity, especially parents, should be educated about it. She also said that the idea that a pederast priest could be safely retained in the priesthood if he is removed from active parish ministry is naive, given the myriad ways pederasts have of approaching the young. Demarest noted that the bishops were not talking about whistleblower protection for good priests who know about sexual misconduct among their brother priests, but who are afraid to come forward because of possible repercussions to their priestly careers. Also absent from the conference: any official place for conservative voices of reform. Appleby and Steinfels had some good things to say, certainly, but concluded with liberal-style calls for more lay involvement. "This doesn't look good," said Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World Report. "Who on the agenda, anywhere on the agenda, is known as a stalwart defender of Catholic teaching on sexual morality?" Lawler's comment gets to the heart of why conservatives are not welcome here: They would have raised the issue of homosexuality among the clergy, absent which this scandal cannot be fully understood, much less dealt with. Helen Hull Hitchcock, leader of the orthodox Women for Faith and Family, asked the bishops in an afternoon press conference what it meant that as many as 90 percent of these publicly known abuse cases involve priests having sex with teenage boys. She did not get a straight answer, so to speak. Goodbye, Good Men author Michael S. Rose, whose red-hot book reports on homosexual corruption in the seminaries, said the bishops seem to understand well that they will not face significant pressure from the news media to address the homosexual question, and are acting accordingly. He notes that the only element of the press showing any real and sustained interest in his extremely relevant book is talk radio. Later in the evening, it was reported that the bishops had decided not to adopt any kind of formal disciplinary mechanism against themselves.
Inside, at a hotel meeting room, a group of feminists calling themselves "The WomenChurch Convergence," convened a "liturgy" that one of them described as indicative of "a participatory, egalitarian, and self-governing model of Church." (You can always tell who the dodgy characters by their inability to use the direct article before the word "church.") The 20 or so ladies, only one of whom looked to be under the age of 30, and two men (from Dignity, a gay group), gathered in a semicircle around a round hotel meeting-room table. It was covered with a floral tablecloth, and pink and white candles formed the centerpiece. The ceremony began with a tape recording of a feminist soft-rock hymn, "Voices that Challenge," an insipid ditty about oppression and self-regard. Soon, they began praying to God as "Just One, you who rage with us against the injustice we experience," and moved into an ersatz "liturgy of the word," in which they replaced the Catholic mass's readings from Holy Scripture with statements by gay and feminist groups, and even a peace and justice committee. "The Word of the Women Church Convergence," the lector said. "Thanks be to God. We are Church," the group answered. And on and on. It's extremely easy to make fun of this gyno-wackiness, but the fact is, when it comes to stating the outrageous facts of this sex-abuse case, there was very little any of these women said in that pseudo-liturgy that a faithful orthodox Catholic could disagree with. And that's instructive. For one thing, the crimes, moral and otherwise, of priests and bishops give these radicals more credibility. In truth, their analysis of why this catastrophe has happened (it's the fault of patriarchy) belongs in the Nutty American category. But emotions are running very high among Catholics these days, leaving everyone open to arguments they otherwise would have dismissed out of hand. Before the Boston case which broke the dam, the feminists on the left, and their extremist counterparts on the right, were fringe figures; today, they look more prophetic. For another, the bishops' appalling behavior has allowed themselves to be flanked on all sides. As Scott Appleby pointed out to the bishops, they have done the heretofore unthinkable: united the Catholic Left and Right. It's a false unity, of course, because though both Left and Right agree that the Church must change, and must change now, there is little if any agreement on how the Church must change. The ideological schism within Church ranks will likely only intensify, particularly if the sense grows among orthodox Catholics that the bishops do not want to address the homosexual problem, and the "lavender mafia" corruption of the seminaries, where much of this abuse starts. Similarly, as Phil Lawler points out, the bishops have said nothing about the Vatican's recent mandate that the bishops recommit themselves to Catholic teaching. That is also at the heart of this scandal. The liberal Appleby made an excellent point in his address to the bishops, saying that the crisis began, in a sense, with the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which forbade artificial birth control for Catholics. A large majority of American Catholics rejected the ruling, and a large majority of American bishops (and priests) declined to defend and promote the teaching. This event, Appleby said, marked the beginning of the bishops and the laity living in bad faith. As Lawler, who agrees with Appleby on this diagnosis (if not the solution), wrote yesterday, the bishops "have, in short, 'looked the other way.' Over the years the habit has become ingrained. On one issue after another — contraception, homosexuality, abortion — bishops have developed the practice of looking the other way, papering over the gap between teaching and practice. Meanwhile, the ordinary Catholic faithful became accustomed to this mode of behavior, so that they began to view bishops as distant, abstracted figures. And so we come to today's scandal. "Yes, the path leads back to Humanae Vitae. And we wish to address the fundamental causes of today's distress, we cannot avoid that history." This is why anybody who thinks the Friday vote on sex-abuse policy will be the end of the matter is dreaming. The battle for the Catholic Church in America has only just begun. |
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bishops came to Dallas wanting to talk about sexually abusive priests,
but they quickly discovered that everybody else wanted to talk about them.
By the end of Thursday's bracing sessions there was little room left for
evasion. 
One
of the more remarkable developments here has been the relative absence
of protesters outside the Fairmont Hotel. The Dallas police seem to have
been ready for far worse. The crowd gathered behind police barricades
across the street from the hotel has been relatively small. Judging from
the signs, conservative and liberal Catholics are equally representative,
and so are the Nutty American community. 
