VATICAN CITY -- As the Vatican debates how it will respond to U.S. norms on clerical sex abuse, it is not only dealing with the finer points of church law. It is also confronting larger issues of church communion -- the particular ties that exist between a bishop and a priest and those between the pope and the bishops.

At the end of September, those bonds of communion seemed to be pulling Vatican officials in somewhat different directions.

Some spoke passionately about the risk of destroying the special trust that should mark the bishop-priest relationship. In their view, the U.S. norms would transform bishops from spiritual guides into reporting agents and sever this bond of trust just when a priest may need it most.

But others are just as concerned that the bonds of communion between Pope John Paul II and U.S. bishops could suffer serious damage if the norms are rejected. The bishops overwhelmingly approved the norms in June, and a Vatican "no" could appear to signal lack of papal confidence in the bishops as pastors and as teachers -- with far-reaching repercussions among U.S. Catholics.

All this helps explain the quandary faced by a cluster of Vatican offices as they weighed the legal and pastoral effects of their decision.

Some were pushing for a type of conditional approval that would allow the norms to be used on an experimental basis. Others believed firmly that the Vatican should invite the bishops to change some key elements deemed "incompatible with the church's universal law."

As September drew to a close, the "experimental" route appeared the most likely, according to a senior Vatican official. Other sources said the delicate debate was still simmering and predicted it could go on longer than expected.

The pope was to review the final recommendation; he was not taking a direct role in the preliminary meetings. But the relationships between bishops and priests, and between pope and bishops, were clearly on his mind.

Addressing Brazilian bishops making their "ad limina" visits to the Vatican, the pope emphasized the unique communion that should exist between bishops and the pope and said this "unity of pastors" was essential if the church wants to respond credibly to modern cultural challenges.

In other words, any clear divergences between Rome and local bishops can only weaken the church's voice.

A few days later, talking to an international group of bishops, he reminded them of their special bond with priests. When ordained, the young priest entrusts himself to the bishop, and the bishop "becomes responsible for the fate of those hands which he grasps in his own," the pope said.

"A priest must be able to feel, especially in moments of difficulty or solitude, that his hands are grasped by the bishop's," he said.

Among the Vatican's experts in church law, one of the more subtle arguments -- and perhaps least understood by the public -- is that the U.S. norms would poison this trust by forcing bishops into an antagonistic legal relationship with any accused priest.

"The bishop has a pastoral responsibility for his priest, even if the priest is guilty. The priest can eventually repent and seek forgiveness, and the bishop should in fact be working for this, trying to recover him spiritually. But many of these norms instead seem designed to cut the priest off," said one Rome canonist.

There's no doubt that among the circle of canon law experts consulted by the Vatican, the prevailing view of the U.S. norms is negative. That sentiment percolates up through many offices of the Roman Curia, too. In some cases, there's a tangible fear of things "American."

Some experts, for example, worried that the accepted definition of sexual abuse has become too elastic in the United States. They see it as based too much on the subjective feelings of a victim rather than objective behavior and believe this principle should not find its way into church law.

Others see a political problem in granting an exception to standard church rules for one country -- especially when the one country is the United States.

"How would you feel as a bishop of Honduras or Paraguay, if when the Americans arrive, powerful and important and full of money, we give in, and when these poor (bishops) from Honduras arrive, we say: 'This is the law, it has to be followed,'" said one high-ranking Vatican official.

"Because the day we give in to the powerful Americans, then we'll have to give in to the powerful Germans, and so on," he said.

But at other levels of the Roman Curia, the strong sentiment is to avoid provoking a break with the U.S. bishops -- not because their country is rich and powerful, but because church unity requires a solution that does not open new wounds.

"It's certainly not a matter of public relations. The issues are collegiality and communion. Everybody here wants to help the bishops solve the problem, but recognizing that in the pressure to do things quickly, some things could have been done better," said one Vatican official.

Last spring, U.S. bishops and cardinals met with the pope and key Vatican officials to discuss the sex abuse crisis. They left convinced they had the Vatican's moral support as they prepared to formulate a national policy.

They did not have a prior Vatican endorsement on many of the specifics, however, and, as one U.S. bishop put it at the time, "the devil is in the details."

Now those details are sitting at the Vatican, proving as devilish as predicted.