Article Title
Catholic bishops adopt long-promised abuse plan — for bishops to police bishops
Link to Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/06/13/catholic-bishops-adopt-long-promised-abuse-plan-bishops-police-bishops/?utm_term=.12f5b922aec7
Source: Washington Post
Author(s): Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein
Date: June 13, 2019
Synopsis of / Excerpts from Article
After a year of scandal, some disheartened believers say the new rules, which don’t require lay involvement, do not go far enough.
On 06-13-2019, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops formally adopted new procedures for policing themselves in regard to the handling of clergy sexual abuse allegations. But to some “aggrieved believers,” the procedures are inherently flawed because the power to decide what to actually do about such allegations remains entirely with archbishops, who may or may not call in civil authorities or lay investigators.
According to the article:
“The bishops are the ones making the conclusions,” said Anne Burke, an Illinois Supreme Court justice who chaired the church’s National Review Board when the sexual abuse crisis first erupted in 2002. She called the new system enacted on Thursday “a fallacy. “There should be no intermediary — call the police,” she said. “There should be one interview, by professionals.”
[The] new policy creates a national hotline, operated by an outside vendor, for Catholics to call or write with complaints that a bishop has abused a child, sexually harassed an adult or mishandled an abuse report.
When the hotline receives a report, it will ordinarily relay it to a leading bishop in the region where the accused bishop works or worked. The bishop who receives the report will be responsible for reporting to law enforcement and to the Vatican, and for bringing in laypeople to help investigate the complaint. The measures also allow for bishops to direct the complaint calls to a layperson.
That’s a far cry from the bishops’ original proposal, debated at their biannual meeting in November, which called for a national body of laypeople who would be empowered to investigate bishops. That idea collapsed when the Vatican insisted they wait until after a global bishops’ summit on sex abuse in February.
“They’re finally doing the bare minimum,” said Adrienne Alexander, who organized nationwide protests calling for bishop accountability after a Pennsylvania grand jury report last summer revealed the extent of the abuse and coverup by the church.