Bishop on Abuse Policy: 'Don't We Believe in Forgiveness?', by Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA Today, June 16, 2011

Bishop on Abuse Policy: 'Don't We Believe in Forgiveness?'

By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today
June 16, 2011

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/06/sex-abuse-catholic-bishops-forgiveness/1

We"ll find out Thursday if the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will make any significant revisions to the rules set in 2002 for rooting out priests who abused young people and preventing new abuses.

At their annual spring meeting, the indications were, as Daniel Burke of Religion News Service points out, they would simply update the policy with minor tweaks. Yet the discussion at the meeting, in Bellevue, Wash, included one startling comment.

RNS quotes the retired Archbishop of Anchorage Francis Hurley saying a "goal" of reconciliation should be to put priest abusers back in ministry and asking, "Don't we believe in forgiveness?"

Whispers in the Loggia poster Rocco Palmo, posting/tweeting in Bellevue expected that "conflating said forgiveness with restoration to ministry...." would be the take-away quote of the day.

Palmo's Tuesday Whispers post gave a summary of exactly why folks are hopped up about the 2002 rules, known as the Dallas Charter and why victims groups say small changes are insufficient:

The scathing Philadelphia grand jury report look at leaders of the Philadelphia archdiocese mishandling abuse claims and "the subsequent suspension of 24 priests found by the civil panel to have "credible" allegations of misconduct despite their prior clearance on the claims by chancery officials."

"The last month's firestorm over a Kansas City priest who, before his May arrest on charges of possessing child pornography, remained in ministry for six months last year after his elementary-school principal reported a series of concerns over the cleric's behavior around children to top diocesan aides"

"Late May's five-part report from the Gallup (N.M.) Independent highlighting lapses of transparency and survivor outreach by the New Mexico diocese -- where, the paper revealed, the local review board has never met with the bishop it's tasked to advise."

The USCCB's annual report on compliance pointing out that even though 55 of nation's 197 dioceses were sent warnings after the USCCB's designated auditors found they weren't enforcing aspects of the Charter, every diocese surveyed, including Philadelphia, Kansas City and Gallup were found "in compliance" for 2010.

The changes proposed by the bishops, who proclaimed themselves by and large pleased with the Charter so far, are minor ones to bring it into accord with the current Vatican guidelines.

This is all still a far cry from what the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and BishopAccountability.org have been seeking for the last decade.

SNAP's press release calls for...

...harsh penalties for any church employee from custodian to cardinal who ignore or conceals child sex crimes. There are no such provisions now, and virtually never, SNAP claims, are those who "enable" child molesting clerics ever punished for their misdeeds.

Bishop-Accountability.org, working from a draft version of the bishop's proposals, called for several changes in a press release including:

Review Boards must have access to files, must meet regularly and publish their minutes. Survivors should be able to appeal a review board decision.

Bishops and their officials must report all allegations, without exception, to civil authorities.

Accused priests must be removed immediately, not at the bishop's discretion

Confidentiality agreements must be outlawed.

And, as they have for a decade, the group continues to call for all dioceses and religious orders to publish detailed lists of accused priests.

Forgiveness... well, not mentioned very often, is it?

Is there a lesson in Prison Fellowship, the Charles Colson group bringing an evangelical message to locked-up criminals? Their premise is that forgiveness is between a person and God, a separate issue from legal and due punishment for crimes against other people.