What Needs Doing

By Russell Shaw
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 6/6/02)

If, as is being widely said, next week's meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is the most important gathering the American bishops have ever had, it is necessary that everyone — starting with the bishops but not ending with them — be as clear as possible about where its importance lies.

One-track reporting by media has created the impression that the test of the June 13-15 assembly in Dallas will be whether the bishops adopt a "zero tolerance" policy on priests guilty of sexually abusing children. But some version of zero tolerance appears all but certain, though important details do remain to be hammered out.

Zero tolerance nevertheless is one of the easier issues the bishops face. Other challenges include shoring up their own credibility, bolstering the morale of good priests, and opening suitable avenues for more involvement in the affairs of the Church on the part of lay people adequately prepared for such responsibility.

It hardly needs saying that the collective credibility of the bishops has been damaged by the sex abuse scandal. To some extent, of course, what's happened is unfair.

Egregious mistakes in the handling of abuse cases surely were made — but not all bishops made them, and those who did seem generally to have acted in good faith according to the facts available to them and the best thinking at the time. If the best thinking turned out to be uncommonly bad, that is hardly their fault.

The bishops nevertheless must take the resulting erosion of trust as a fact. What has been lost will not be restored overnight, but a focused discussion next week in which members of the hierarchy were seen to be grappling openly and honestly with the real issues would help.

Along with confidence in the bishops, the morale of good priests also has taken a beating in the last five months. These men need to know that among thinking Catholics the anger aimed at the guilty few is not directed at the honorable many.

Lay groups like Legatus and the Knights of Columbus have been making this point lately in paid advertisements. These expressions of trust and appreciation are much in order. As for the bishops, they need to do their part with deeds more than with

words—refusing to wink at, much less reward, dissent and defiance of the Church or the flaunting of celibacy by clerics who, whatever their sexual orientation may be, think rules don't apply to them.

Last on my short list of things that need doing is ending the state of passivity and dependency of the Catholic laity and treating them consistently and across the board as true equals of clerics in the life of the Church, with their own special role to play in its mission.

When I made this point recently to a sympathetic archbishop, he replied that many lay people, competent enough in other areas and fields of endeavor, are in fact woefully unprepared—neither educated nor spiritually formed—for greater responsibility in the Church.

Unfortunately, he was right. But the objection has a simple answer: Educate and form the laity. Minimalistic expectations no longer represent an acceptable option for them or anyone else.

The bishops can't be expected to accomplish all of this next week, but they can make a start. A tough line on sexual abuse of children is necessary but not enough, since the crisis is larger than that and calls for a larger response. Let us keep these pastors of our Church in our prayers.

Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C.

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