ROME, ITALY, October 17, 2002 (LSN.ca) – The U.S. bishops have been handed a major setback to their zero tolerance Dallas policy on sexual abuse by priests. It will be formally announced tomorrow that the Vatican will not approve the policy.
Catholic World News reported today that Canon-law experts in Rome consider the American bishops’ policy to be defective because the proposed norms did not provide “due process” safeguards for priests who are accused of sexual misconduct. Vatican experts also complained that the Dallas policy used a vague and imprecise definition of sexual abuse.
Rome has called for the formation of a joint commission, composed of both Vatican officials and American bishops, to address the defects of the Dallas policy.
The outcome validates criticisms of the policy by prominent U.S. church critics. Fr. Richard Neuhaus severely castigated the policy in the August/September issue of First things. He stated that “another term for the Dallas zero tolerance is scapegoating…This is not ‘for the good of the Church’. This has nothing to do with ‘the protection of children and young people.” Instead of taking concrete actions against frequent criminal neglect by some of their fellow bishops who allowed the scandals to flourish in the first place, the bishops opted to target only misbehaving underlings or perceived troublemakers with the Dallas policy. Critics have also strongly criticized the bishops for emphasizing public relations damage control. There has been growing anger that the bishops have barely even mentioned the dissent and tolerance of homosexuality that are considered by Rome and others to be the source of the problems. It appears that many U.S. and Canadian bishops have still not grasped or are unwilling to admit their own substantial culpability in the priest sex scandal phenomenon. For example, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony is once again permitting the usual large rabble of homosexual supportive and radically dissident priests and nuns to speak at the diocese’s annual Religious Education Conference to be held Feb. 27 to March 2, 2003. See the Catholic World News report https://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=30534 and CNN https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/10/17/church.abuse/index.html See U.S. BISHOPS’ POLICY SEEN AS DEEPLY FLAWED https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/aug/02080702.html See LifeSite’s Church Scandals pages https://www.lifesitenews.com/features/churchscandals/