Catholic board seeks new, lay-led review
Call acknowledges that those in power cannot investigate themselves
A committee created by the Catholic Church specifically to prevent sexual misconduct by clergy on Tuesday issued a damning assessment of the failings to stem the abuse, calling it an “evil” caused by “a loss of moral leadership.”
The National Review Board called for an investigation led by parishioners, saying a new wave of abuse scandals points to a “systematic problem” and that the bishops themselves can’t be trusted to lead an investigation.
Some survivors of clergy sex abuse said the call was a disingenuous attempt by the church to get around a true independent investigation.
The board was formed in 2002 in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandal that started in the Boston Archdiocese and rocked the church globally.
The committee said it was compelled to seek a lay-led investigation after recent revelations from a grand jury investigation into six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania and allegations that led to the resignation last month of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C.
The grand jury report estimated 300 Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania molested more than 1,000 children — and possibly many more — since the 1940s, and accused senior church officials, including McCarrick, of systematically covering up complaints.
McCarrick formerly served the church in Pennsylvania.
“Intimidation, fear, and the misuse of authority created an environment that was taken advantage of by clerics, including bishops, causing harm to minors, seminarians, and those most vulnerable,” the board said in its statement. “The culture of silence enabled the abuse to go on virtually unchecked.”
Dennis M. Doyle, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio and a Catholic theologian, said the National Review Board’s call would be a notable shift in the church’s history of a hierarchal authority.
The call for a lay-led investigation, he said, “is an acknowledgement that the people in power can’t be in charge of investigating themselves.”