Lay panel sets wide review of church
Keating board to examine sexuality, role of celibacy
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff, 1/18/2003
EW YORK - The national board created by the US Catholic bishops to examine
the clergy sexual abuse crisis announced yesterday that it plans a sweeping
examination of what went wrong, including an effort to determine the sexual
orientation and practices of the church's avowedly celibate priests.
The lay panel, led by former Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma and packed
with high-powered Catholic judges, lawyers, and business leaders, said it
hopes by June to issue the first comprehensive study by the church of the
scope of abuse by Catholic priests. The study, panel members said, will
attempt an authoritative accounting of the number of abusive priests and
abused minors, the gender and age of victims, the time period during which
the abusers were trained and ordained, and the amount of money paid out by
the church to settle litigation and treat victims and offenders.
But the board said it would also embark on an unprecedented effort by a
church-appointed body to determine what caused the crisis, focusing not on
why individual priests molested minors, but on why Catholic bishops kept
hundreds of molesters on the job as priests until public outrage forced change.
''For us to be complete, we have to deal with some of these big, big
issues,'' said attorney Robert S. Bennett of Washington, a board member.
''I don't know how much value there is in spending too much time on why an
accused priest did what he did - more important is why were priests
permitted to move from parish to parish and diocese to diocese.''
Board members, after concluding a two-day meeting in New York, told
reporters yesterday that they are determined to examine all possible causes
of the crisis, including the roles of sexuality and celibacy, and the role
of the church power structure. And they said they plan to undertake a
sweeping epidemiological study focusing on the psychosexual development and
behavior of Catholic clergy.
''We have to look at the institution, and at systemic problems,'' Bennett
said. ''What is the role of celibacy? Of homosexuality? We are going to
deal with the very tough issues. I'm certain we are not going to get into
doctrinal issues, unless they are a cause.''
A variety of organizations, including news organizations and academic
researchers, have attempted to assess the scope of abuse within the church
and the sexual behavior of priests, but have always been stymied by a lack
of cooperation by the church.
''People have tried to get their arms around these numbers for 12 years,''
acknowledged William R. Burleigh, chairman of the board and former CEO of
the E.W. Scripps Company.
The panelists said they are optimistic that bishops will cooperate with its
efforts, because the board was appointed by the bishops and charged by them
with writing reports about the crisis.
''If someone doesn't cooperate, everyone will know about it,'' Bennett
said. ''The laity is not going to tolerate a bishop who doesn't cooperate.''
Board members said they are divided over whether to push bishops to turn
over the names of all abusive priests, something many bishops have been
reluctant to do.
As part of the board's effort to determine what went wrong, it is planning
to interview a number of Catholic prelates. Board members said that
Cardinal Bernard F. Law, the former archbishop of Boston, agreed on
Thursday to be interviewed by the board sometime over the next several months.
The board also said that the administrator of the Archdiocese of Boston,
Bishop Richard G. Lennon, has invited the board's subcommittee on ''safe
environments'' to visit Boston to review the archdiocese's new program for
training children to resist or report abuse by adults and training adults
to spot and report abuse of minors.
''We know Boston is getting high marks,'' said Jane Chiles, former director
of the Kentucky State Catholic Conference, who chairs the subcommittee.
Chiles said her subcommittee will meet with Lennon, review Boston's
training program, and meet with the archdiocese's liaison to victims.
The National Review Board was created by the US bishops' conference last
June as part of a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
The board, according the charter, is supposed to ''commission a
comprehensive study of the causes and context of the current crisis in
order to understand the problem more fully and to enhance the effectiveness
of future response'' and to ''commission a descriptive study, with the full
cooperation of the dioceses/eparchies, of the nature and scope of the
problem within the Catholic Church in the United States, including such
data as statistics on perpetrators and victims.''
The board is also supposed to assist the church's new Office for Child and
Youth Protection in a variety of ways. That office, headed by former FBI
agent Kathleen McChesney, is preparing to audit US dioceses for compliance
with new rules that require removing all abusive priests from ministry.
McChesney said she hopes to issue her first report in December.
The subcommittee examining causes of the crisis, headed by Bennett, has
already interviewed three individuals, and has 10 more appointments over
the next weeks. Bennett declined to say who he was interviewing other than
Law and Cardinal Edward M. Egan of New York, but said the subcommittee has
a list of about 100 people with whom it wants to meet, including victims,
authors of books about the crisis, and experts from across the ideological
spectrum. He said he hopes to issue a report on causes of the crisis in a
year to 18 months.
The epidemiological study of priests is led by Dr. Paul R. McHugh, a
Lawrence native who serves as director of the department of psychiatry and
behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University. McHugh said he wants to
hire a secular research organization with experience interviewing people
about sexuality to conduct polling and in-depth interviews that he hopes
will lead to findings worthy of publication in academic journals. That
study is expected to take as long as several years.
McHugh said he hoped the study would help explain ''what are the pressures
on priests who offend.''
''The goal is to understand the causes and contexts of this abuse,'' he
said. ''My reputation is at stake ... and I expect cooperation.''
The board members said they are optimistic that their efforts will help the
church.
''What this is about is restoring trust,'' said Leon Panetta, former White
House chief of staff and the director of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta
Institute for Public Policy in Monterey Bay, Calif. ''We've had trust badly
damaged.''
The board has been meeting in a variety of locations around the country, as
well as by teleconference and e-mail, and chose this week to meet in New
York. The group was given a cold shoulder by Egan who declined either to
celebrate Mass for the board or to provide an auxiliary bishop to do so.
Egan also directed that the board not be allowed to attend dinner with the
Knights of Malta, a Catholic fraternal organization, last night. Board
members said other bishops have been more welcoming.
Michael Paulson can be reached by e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/18/2003.
� Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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