Catholic leaders call sex abuse report disturbing

February 28, 2004

BY DAVID CRUMM, JIM SCHAEFER AND PATRICIA MONTEMURRI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

A scathing report decrying Catholic leaders' complicity in ignoring the abuse of more than 10,000 children over the past 50 years by at least 4,392 clerics was a deeply disturbing blow, Detroit Cardinal Adam Maida said Friday.

The two-part report, prepared by blue-ribbon teams of experts in criminal justice and psychology, recommended that Catholic bishops who ignored abuse consider resigning from their posts.

About 700 priests, including 20 in southeast Michigan, have been removed from the ministry since 2002 for allegedly abusing minors. However, the report points out, "few bishops have left the episcopacy."

Maida said that he will not resign, but he renewed his pledge to strictly enforce new rules combating abuse. "No matter how challenging, our compass is set, our commitment is firm," he said.

Catholic bishops nationwide made similarly contrite pledges.

"On behalf of the bishops and the entire church in the United States, I restate and reaffirm our apologies to all of you who have been harmed," Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in Washington, D.C.

"The terrible history reported here today is history," he said.

Those reactions were in stark contrast to the largely indifferent attitude of many bishops over the years, said an in-depth summary of the problem that was edited by attorney Robert Bennett, a member of the bishops' new national review board. The summary called for change in church governance and represented half of the report issued Friday. The other half focused on the scope of the problem and was written by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Meeting with reporters in Washington, Bennett said, "A bishop must remember that he is called to be a caring pastor, a shepherd of the flock -- and not to act like a risk-assessment manager of an insurance company."

He bluntly told bishops to change their ways. They "must act with less secrecy, more transparency and a greater openness to the gifts that all members bring to the church."

Attitude of indifference

Bishops in the United States cannot unilaterally change the canon law governing the 1-billion-member worldwide Catholic church. Nevertheless, Bennett's portion of the report criticized a "don't rock the boat attitude" that "has prevailed among the bishops for too long."

The report added, "Many priests and laity believe that greater lay consultation in the selection of bishops and other aspects of church governance is required to avoid these problems. The laity largely have been excluded from matters of church governance in the United States."

That's also the case at the Vatican, where business is conducted largely by clerics.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls had no comment Friday on what American bishops were describing as one of the most devastating days in their church's history. Nor was there any mention of the American reports on the Vatican Information Service, the official daily record of news from the center of church authority.

On Thursday, Navarro-Valls told the Free Press that he expected to read both of the reports, but it was unlikely he would have any reaction this week.

Instead, the issues likely will be discussed in private meetings between the pope, his staff and American bishops in coming months. Every five years, each of the world's Catholic bishops report to the pope in formal visits called ad limina ("to the threshold"). Michigan and Ohio bishops are scheduled to see the pope in early May.

The Vatican staff is not uninterested in the American crisis, said Msgr. Steven Raica, a Lansing priest who is the superior in Rome of Casa Santa Maria, a residence for nearly 60 American priests who are studying in Rome.

The church circles the globe and the Vatican cannot "view the world through the optic of one particular country," Raica said.

Church leaders are not deaf to the pleas of victims, said Cardinal Edmund Szoka, a former head of the Archdiocese of Detroit who now helps run the Vatican. He said Friday that the survey results were painful and have tarnished the reputation of the vast majority of good priests.

"I'm not diminishing the fact that many people suffer and still suffer, and they have my sympathies and my prayers," Szoka said. He added that the vast majority of priests and bishops, who remain faithful to their vows, also are suffering through the crisis.

Clergy defended

Joe Maher, a Redford Township businessman who runs a support group for accused priests, went further, arguing that priests are suffering unfairly.

The statistical summaries are meaningless, he said. "These are allegations. They are unproven. These are not victims. These are alleged victims."

Maher, whose group helps accused priests through civil and criminal proceedings, said the numbers do serve one group: attorneys who capitalize on settlements like the $85 million recently distributed to victims in the Archdiocese of Boston.

"I'll put it point-blank: Some greedy lawyers are making millions out of this issue," Maher said. "They know the church won't fight back, so they're having a field day."

The John Jay report says the Boston settlement was in addition to $500 million that the church and its insurance carriers have paid to care for victims over a period of 50 years. Church officials in metro Detroit said they have paid about $1.4 million in settlements.

The more than 4,000 abusive clerics represent about 4 percent of all priests and deacons who served in the United States since 1950, the report said. In metro Detroit, Maida's staff identified 63 abusive clerics during roughly the same period.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, welcomed the report as "a step closer toward the truth. These reports are a diagnosis of sorts. Not necessarily comprehensive, but at least a partial diagnosis."

He warned, however, that "a diagnosis is not a cure. And we can't confuse the two."