PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
March 23, 2019
By Peter Smith
When he was removed from the priesthood in February over the sexual molestation of minors, the 88-year-old former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick didn’t lose a roof over his head. He’s staying in a monastery in Kansas.
When Australian Cardinal George Pell’s conviction for sexual abuse was announced the same month, the church didn’t need to provide such housing — because the penitentiary system was providing it.
But such cases raise a question that also pertains to priests who are removed due to one or more substantiated cases of sexual abuse.
Since 2002 in the United States, the policy has been to ban such priests from ministry for life.
But then what becomes of them? Does the church still owe a cleric a living even if he betrayed the trust placed in him?
It mainly depends on whether a diocese keeps him under its wing or not, and if it doesn’t, whether he’s able to fend for himself.
And when the church does provide a living, it’s typically at subsistence levels.
“It’s basically not putting them out on the street,” said Sister Sharon Euart, a canon lawyer and executive director of the Resource Center for Religious Institutes, based in Maryland. They would get food, shelter and other basic needs but no luxuries, said Sister Euart, a former executive coordinator of the Canon Law Society of America and canonical consultant for religious institutes and diocesan bishops.
Since the U.S. bishops adopted a zero-tolerance policy in 2002, there are two scenarios for handling a priest who is found to have committed abuse:
1. A bishop could start a “canonical” process within the church legal system, asking the Vatican to defrock the priest (“dismissed from the clerical state,” in canonical language).
2. In other cases, particularly “for reasons of advanced age or infirmity,” a bishop could allow the man to retain the technical status of priest but with a lifetime ban on public ministry and such trappings as clerical garb and the title “Father.”
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