Word: bishopate
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...that doesn't mean he is ready or able to confront such an explosive issue. The papacy hates to bend to outside pressure. St. Paul, Minn., attorney Jeff Anderson, who has been suing the church regularly for abuse victims, says, "They're not going to change until a bishop goes to jail and every bishop hears the door clang behind him and that sound resonates to the Vatican...
Scott Appleby, director of Notre Dame's Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, says the Conference of Catholic Bishops should immediately hammer out an enforceable uniform code of binding policies that enshrine those principles. "The problem in the past," he says, "has been the autonomy of each bishop, free to adopt or ignore conference policies." Many have suggested that each diocese name a board of independent lay advisers--lawyers, psychologists--to oversee every abuse case. More rigorous screening and modernized seminary training for sexually immature priests would help...
...scandals, Boston's Bernard Law and New York's Egan. But plenty of influential Catholics are suggesting that the U.S. church would benefit from penitential resignations at the top. Says an editorial in the upcoming issue of the national Roman Catholic weekly America: "If early on some bishops had been willing to claim full responsibility and resign, victims, parishes, the media and juries might have been less inclined to vent their anger on the church as a whole. That not one bishop (except the two who were themselves abusers) has resigned during this 15-year-long crisis is astonishing...
...bishops stay, Roman Catholics would like their leaders to trade the church's culture of secrecy for openness and accountability. The first obligation, says Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, is "to make such matters known." The second is to set transparent rules that hold the church responsible for its mistakes. That clarion call comes from conservative columnists like William J. Bennett, who advises, "Candor and full disclosure are a must if the reputation of the church is to be protected." And it comes from sex-abuse experts like Richard Sipe, who says, "The church...
...Saturday in the 1990s. The bishop showed up at the rectory. I was very surprised to see him. And he said a couple of kids had come to him and accused me of molestation. I admitted to one of the two, but the other wasn't true. By this time I had moved to the point where I wasn't doing it anymore. I was feeling really positive and hopeful. But when these boys came forward and the bishop came, everything changed. I said, "What do you want me to do?" And he said, "Well, I'd like...