Bishops Adopt 1-Strike Policy
No discipline for leaders who covered up abuses

By David Heinzmann and Monica Davey
Chicago Tribune
June 15, 2002

Dallas - Seeking to end the sex abuse scandal ripping apart their church, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a tough national policy that will remove any priest from ministry for even a single act of sexual abuse.

But in what many found to be a troubling silence, the policy included no terms to discipline or rebuke bishops whose actions protected sexually abusive clerics in the past.

The new policy will strip an abusing priest of his Roman collar and his ability to do any public work as a priest, although he will not be automatically defrocked--or laicized, as the church calls complete removal from the priesthood. Some critics found that, too, to be a shortcoming of the new proposal.

Nevertheless, a majority of the American bishops said they believe the new policy, which becomes effective immediately, will restore Catholics' confidence in their leadership.

"From this day forward no one known to have sexually abused a child will work in the Catholic Church in the United States," said Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the conference. "We bishops apologize to anyone harmed by one of our priests and for our tragically slow response in recognizing the horror of sexual abuse."

Chicago's Cardinal Francis George had intended to push for a measure that would have created what he called "consequences" for bishops who mishandled sexual abuse cases. Although his proposal was not included, he said he believed it would be addressed in the coming months and might be voted on at the bishops' next national conference in November.

"In the discussions, it became clear that this is what we could support at this time," he said. "But that's enough to begin it. I'm quite content with what happened."

The final policy, adopted by a vote of 239-13 after six hours of debate Friday, removed the possibility that a priest who had one known incident of sexual abuse in his past might remain in ministry. Instead, the bishops decided that "even for a single act of sexual abuse of a minor--past, present or future--the offending cleric will not remain in ministry and will not receive a future assignment."

The bishops' action apparently would end the ministry of seven Chicago-area priests, including one popular pastor who has rebuilt his tarnished reputation at a South Side church. For days, Rev. John Calicott, who was accused of abusing two 15-year-old boys in 1976 and is now monitored by the archdiocese of Chicago, said he had hoped that the bishops would not apply their new sex-abuse policy retroactively.

"I see no real purpose for it," said Calicott, pastor of Holy Angels Church. "The only purpose is vengeance. There is a shift from protecting the children to punishing the priests."

George said that while he supported the terms of the new policy, he regretted there would be no leeway in cases such as Calicott's.

"The problematic, or the flawed element, is the lack of an ability to nuance the treatment of perpetrators, which has served us well, I believe, in Chicago," he said.

Gregory, who is the Belleville, Ill., bishop, said he could not estimate how many priests would be removed as a result of the zero-tolerance policy.

As the 300 bishops moved on to handling some of the housekeeping and technical tasks accompanying their approval of the new policy, they said Friday's historic action assures that the church has done everything in its power to protect Catholic children from sexual abuse by clerics.

'Life of penance and prayer'

The final policy restricted the status of a priest guilty of abuse who is not dismissed from the priesthood to "a life of penance and prayer" in which he will not be able to "present himself publicly as a priest," including wearing clerical garb or celebrating mass publicly.

Gregory and others who have discussed terms of the policy with Vatican officials in recent weeks said they are confident of Rome's approval. However, the Vatican had advocated a case-by-case review of old allegations rather than a zero-tolerance policy.

George said the American bishops can pledge themselves to uphold the policy with or without Rome. But it would not be mandatory law until the Vatican signs off, and George said he foresees a negotiation process over the strictest terms.

Under the policy, local bishops would be responsible for deciding whether to pursue the most severe action of actually defrocking a priest in their diocese.

Victims of sexual abuse by priests were quick to denounce the terms of the policy because it leaves room for guilty clerics to technically remain priests, although they would be stripped of all of their priestly faculties and privileges.

"If they're going to allow these men to still be priests, they can still abuse that position and authority," said Barbara Blaine, founder and president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

George disagreed.

"Zero tolerance--that's about as zero as you can get," he said. "He may never publicly present himself as a priest. He may never wear a collar. He may never have any public ministry. What's missing there?"

And Joliet Bishop Joseph Imesch said he believed rank-and-file Catholics will be satisfied with the policy.

"I think all people want to be assured of is that the priest will not be in public ministry. That he will have no access to children, and I think this takes care of that," Imesch said.

Bishops also said critics needed to understand the difficulty of formally defrocking a priest.

Defrocking called complicated

"I think the important thing is that someone who is guilty of a crime not be in any ministry of any sort," said Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria. But laicization is a complicated process in canon law that he described as a legal "swamp and a morass."

The zero-tolerance policy survived a challenge Friday afternoon in an open session of the conference from several bishops who stuck to a traditional stance that the church needed to leave room for forgiveness and rehabilitation of priests who sexually abused victims many years before.

"We have to come to a standard of zero tolerance but not a standard of forgiveness," said Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Sullivan of Brooklyn. "We have come to a policy of unforgiveness."

Bishops quickly rose up to defend the zero-tolerance policy on multiple fronts. Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore said most bishops' experiences have shown that it is very rare for a sexual offender to molest a child in only one case.

"People can be forgiven and should be forgiven," Bishop Francis DiLorenzo of Honolulu. However, child molesters "have gone way beyond what we as a society, and we in Catholic moral theology, recognize as cultural taboos."

The future accountability of bishops in handling sexual abuse cases will fall to the newly created National Review Board, made up of laypeople. In addition to Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a former FBI agent and state prosecutor, Gregory appointed Illinois Appellate Judge Anne Burke and prominent Washington lawyer Robert Bennett, who represented President Bill Clinton during his impeachment.

Keating was present at a news conference with Gregory after the vote was taken. He said that as a lifelong Catholic, he has been horrified by the church sex abuse scandal.

In addition to scrutinizing the future conduct of bishops, Keating said he would push for the pope to remove bishops when investigations show their past conduct protected priests they knew to be abusive.

"It's a criminal act. If someone obscures, absolves or obstructs [the investigation of] that criminal act, arguably, they are accessories to the crime," he said.

Panel can add members

Along with Bennett and Burke, whom Keating described as "two solid, no-nonsense Catholics," the Oklahoma governor will be charged with appointing more members to the board.

Gregory did not comment on Keating's pledge to pursue the removal of bishops who protected abusive priests.

Earlier he said it was not his or his colleagues' place to ask their fellow bishops to resign.

"The question of resignation belongs exclusively between the bishop and the Holy Father," he said.

In addition to unanswered questions about the accountability of bishops, some church leaders also walked away from the session unsure of whether the church will keep track of abusers who are defrocked, especially those who are returned to lay society with no criminal charges hanging over their heads.

Bishop Gerald Gettelfinger of Evansville, Ind., suggested a "national registry" of former priests who are sex offenders that could be posted on a Web site in the same way that civil law enforcement posts sex offender lists.

No such provisions were included in the policy, but Gregory said Gettelfinger's proposal could be submitted to the sex abuse committee and put in the policy later.