In 2002 the American Catholic Church instituted reforms to protect children from sexual predators in the church. The recent charges brought by civil authorities in Philadelphia — the first indictment ever of a senior church official in covering up an abuse case — have exposed failings in the system that was put in place. (More indictments were delivered Friday — the end of this post.) What lessons can we learn and apply in The Episcopal Church? Is our system adequate to the task?
The New York Times takes a deep look at the Philadelphia case:
“This is confusing and demoralizing to many people,” said Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash., chairman of the bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, who said he recently met with a large group of these workers at a convention in Los Angeles. “Everybody is very saddened by this because people are working very hard, each and every day, to implement the charter. And to have this happen is really just painful for all of us.”
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The core of the charter was a “zero tolerance” pledge to remove from the ministry any priests credibly accused of abuse. So the grand jury’s charge that the Philadelphia Archdiocese allowed as many as 37 priests to continue serving, despite an array of charges against them, provoked the most searing questions. Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia at first rebutted the grand jury’s findings, then changed course, suspended three priests and ultimately suspended 21 more — the largest mass suspension by a diocese in the three-decade history of the abuse scandal.
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Cardinal Rigali worked for many years in the Vatican and still has powerful allies there. A kingmaker among American bishops, he serves on the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, the body charged with recommending bishops’ assignments to the pope. (Also serving on that Vatican congregation: Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who resigned as archbishop of Boston in 2002 during the abuse scandal there.)
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The episode identifies a key weakness in the bishops’ charter: neither the bishops’ auditors nor the review boards have the same power as a grand jury or a prosecutor to subpoena witnesses or compel the church to turn over files. “They can only review the information they’re given,” said Diane Knight, chairwoman of the National Review Board, the advisory and accountability committee appointed by the bishops. “It is startling and discouraging that after nine years of the charter and all of the work that has gone into it, to have this kind of a grand jury report come out is troubling at best.”
Read it more here.
Additional indictments announced:
The judge, Renee Cardwell Hughes, also agreed to the district attorney’s belated request to charge all five with conspiracy. The priests and the schoolteacher are already accused of rape; the monsignor, William Lynn, the highest-ranking official to be accused of a crime in the three-decade-long abuse scandal in the United States, is suspected of covering up rape by the priests and is charged with child endangerment.
At one point Friday, Judge Hughes, of the Court of Common Pleas, ordered Monsignor Lynn, 60, to stand and take an oath to tell the truth. She wanted to make sure he understood the consequences of having the archdiocese pay for his lawyers. In a riveting 20 minutes of questioning, she told him that this could jeopardize his ability to act in his own best interest, especially if he is implicating other church officials to help his defense, and would prevent him from claiming during any appeal that he was not properly represented.