Vatican asks US Bishops not to vote on proposals to tackle sexual abuse
BALTIMORE - The Vatican shocked attendees of a key meeting of U.S. bishops Monday, directing Americas’ Catholic leaders to delay voting on key measures meant to hold Bishops themselves more accountable in the abuse cases that have scourged the church.
At the same time, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States suggested that Bishops should not look to lay people in the church or law enforcement to confront the church’s sexual abuse crisis.
Thus the Bishops of America’s 196 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses were left scrambling, as they learned just as they began their first meeting since the abuse crisis re-emerged this summer that Rome wanted them to drop all the votes on their agenda. In an unusual move, the Bishops had devoted their annual meeting almost exclusively to the burgeoning national crisis starting with a period of prayer today.
Moments after the the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops learned of the Vatican’s letter, Archbishop Christopher Pierre, the Vatican’s Ambassador to the United States, warned of supporting outside lay investigations into the church.
He seemed to refer obliquely to both the Bishops’ now-tabled proposal to establish a lay commission capable of investigating Bishops’ misconduct, and also the more than a dozen U.S. states’ ongoing criminal and civil investigations into crimes committed by priests.
“There may be a temptation on the part of some to relinquish responsibility for reform to others from ourselves, as if we were no longer capable of reforming or trusting ourselves,” Pierre said. “Assistance is both welcome and necessary, and surely collaboration with the laity is essential. However, the responsibility as Bishops of this Catholic Church is ours.”
Pierre, a French bishop sent by Pope Francis to Washington in 2016, quoted a French author who said that “whoever pretends to reform the church with the same means to reform temporal society” will “fail.”
The bishops had planned to vote on a code of conduct, the first ethical guidelines for bishops, and to create the lay commission. Instead, Cardinal Daniel Dinardo - the president of the U.S. bishops’ conference - told the group that the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops wants American bishops to take no action until a worldwide meeting of church leaders in February.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishopaccountability.org, called the last-minute order from the Vatican “truly incredible.”
“What we see here is the Vatican again trying to suppress even modest progress by the U.S. bishops,” said Doyle, whose group compiles data on clergy abuse in the church.
The bishops, like the advocates who had gathered near their Baltimore meeting to protest on behalf of victims, expressed frustration at the Vatican’s move.
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago quickly proposed an alternative to the Vatican’s request that no vote be taken. He suggested a nonbinding vote at this session, followed by an additional meeting of all the bishops in March - after Francis’s worldwide meeting - to formally vote on these policies as soon as possible.
Leaders said that the bishops will still spend Tuesday and Wednesday debating and fine-tuning their proposals, as planned. They will just conclude the meeting without any binding vote.
Some Bishops said the Vatican’s request alone damages American leaders’ efforts to regain parishioners’ trust, after a Pennsylvania grand jury report documented decades of abuse by hundreds of priests.
But even as he he repeatedly proclaimed himself disappointed by the Vatican’s request, Dinardo said that the American bishops will act in accordance with its wishes.
It was not until Sunday night that Dinardo got the letter from the Congregation for Bishops, the powerful Vatican body, that Dinardo said also raised questions of whether the documents ran afoul of some fine points of canon law and directed the U.S. bishops not to vote.
He said he did not know if Pope Francis himself had issued the order.
When he opened the meeting, Dinardo said that the U.S. bishops remain committed to the proposals they had planned.
During the day of prayer, two clergy abuse survivors were invited to speak to the bishops
He asked the question that he said he learned to ask in church: What would Jesus do? “Would he have called his lawyers and denounced the victims? Or would he have turned over the tables in a fit of rage and declared that this was intolerable in his father’s house?” Torres said. “I ask [for] your action, which is needed right now. Not in three months. Not in six months. Yesterday.”