Word: catholicization
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The horror stories exploding onto front pages are modifying church behavior, whether its leaders like it or not. Under duress, some bishops have scrambled to announce "zero tolerance" toward any priest, past or present, against whom allegations have been made. Up to a dozen Los Angeles priests have been quietly...
Nor has the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops produced universal guidelines for how zero-tolerance policies will be fairly administered. Jan Malicki, ordained in Poland, came to North Miami in the late '80s as an associate pastor. In 1998 two women accused him of sexual abuse while one of them...
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...
Realistically, Rome will not address big reforms while the crisis is boiling. That is a reassuring tradition for the two American Cardinals most implicated in the 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...
If the 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...