Catholic superstorm swamps weakened church

Court Justice Anne M. Burke.

She said in an interview that the bishops’ credibility has been undercut, and that if the pope agrees to recommission the board, it will accept the task.

She said the board should investigate three things:

• The rise of Cardinal McCarrick through the ranks despite some knowing of his conduct.

• The failure of bishops to resolve old abuse cases that occurred before the 2002 zero-tolerance charter.

• The bishops’ failure to apply the 2002 charter to themselves.

Justice Burke said in her letter that the bishops have taken steps to make churches safer than they used to be for children. But she said an independent review of this unfinished business is urgently needed “to restore confidence in the church and the hierarchy.”

Even before this year’s crises, the church here had its struggles. Since 2000, long before any grand jury convened, the Diocese of Pittsburgh has suffered substantial losses in members, worship participation and school enrollment. That’s prompting a current diocese-wide reorganization full of parish and school mergers.

There’s no end in sight to the storms. The accusations of Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse of young adults is amounting to a convergence of the #MeToo movement with the abuse accusations, and that emerged again when the late Greensburg Bishop Anthony Bosco was accused this past week of inappropriately touching a nursing student when he was a Pittsburgh hospital chaplain decades ago.

Hundreds of tips are pouring in to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s hotline for abuse victims, and New York, New Jersey and other state attorneys general are launching their own investigations.

The matter casts a cloud over an upcoming Vatican summit on outreach to youth. And it portends a fierce showdown at the November meeting of bishops.

Even if their agenda includes space for things like immigration, the meeting promises to be one of the most eventful since that of June 2002 in Dallas, when the hundreds of bishops gathered in the glare of a similar number of reporters as they hammered out the charter that adopted a zero tolerance policy toward anyone who ever abused a child.

As for the Vatican intrigue, local bishops David Zubik of Pittsburgh and Edward Malesic of Greensburg said the accusations of Archbishop Vigano should get an investigation.

“There needs to be a thorough examination of the issues raised in the letter of Archbishop Vigano so that conclusive answers can be given,” Bishop Zubik said in a statement. The controversy “seems to have only brought about more confusion and division at a time when we as the church need to focus on how we can continue to reach out to and support the victims of abuse by clergy. It is also a time to help everyone better understand the steps that we have taken and are taking to respond to allegations of abuse and strengthen our processes in dealing with allegations of abuse.”