BALTIMORE (CNS)— Moving ahead with their fall general meeting in Baltimore after a last-minute Vatican request to postpone two planned actions related to sex abuse in the Church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops nevertheless spent much time in discussion of this important issue.
“We have accepted it with disappointment,” Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, USCCB president, said of the congregation’s request during a news conference.
“We have not lessened in any of our resolve for actions. We are going to work intensely on these items of action. We can’t vote on them totally, but clarify them, get them more intensely canonically well, so that Rome will see that. We’re going to keep pushing and moving until we get to a point where they become action,” he said.
“We are ourselves not happy about this,” he continued. “We are working very hard to move to action. We are just at a bump in the road.”
Citing the universal nature of the Catholic Church, he also said that the U.S. bishops cannot act unilaterally to enact standards unless they comply with canon law.
The cardinal stressed that he planned to press the need for the proposals to improve bishops’ accountability when he represents the U.S. bishops at the February gathering.
He repeated several times that the bishops were committed to implementing the proposals despite the setback. “The bishops are all of one mind on this,” he said.
Acknowledging that some parishioners would be “quite angry” that no action was to be taken during the fall assembly, he said that it will show each bishop what it means to be a “local shepherd.”
“You always want to keep giving people a sense of hope,” Cardinal DiNardo added. “We need a living sense of hope right now and I think the Church can grant it” not only through the shepherds but also “through our good and wonderful people who are moving along.”
Until Cardinal DiNardo announced that no vote would be taken on the proposals as the bishops opened their fall general assembly in Baltimore, none of the bishops were aware of the Vatican’s concerns, said Bishop Christopher J. Coyne of Burlington, Vt, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Communications.
“It has thrown us a little bit sideways because it was completely unexpected,” Bishop Coyne said of the Vatican correspondence.
As the meeting was beginning, the bishops of Missouri made public a letter and statement sent to the chairman of the USCCB Committee for the Children and Young People. The letter to Bishop Timothy L. Doherty of Lafayette, Ind., committee chairman, came with a 10-point plan to address the current scandal.
It said that while the bishops support some of the proposed actions from the Administrative Committee, they hoped the USCCB would address the “abuse of power that is at the center of the sexual abuse scandal of our Church.”
Among the points in their plan, the Missouri bishops called for putting abuse survivors at the center of the Church’s response to the crisis; strengthening the 2002 “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People;” and having each bishop mandate that the charter apply to each religious order serving in their diocese; and better utilize the charisms of the laity.
Most of the first day was set aside for prayer and reflection by the bishops in a makeshift chapel at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.
During this time the bishops heard from speakers, including two survivors of child sex abuse, Luis A. Torres Jr. and Teresa Pitt Green. While they remain active in the Church, both spoke of the emotional pain they have lived with. They also said the Church can and must do better on addressing sex abuse.
The bishops also heard from two Catholic women Church leaders who urged them to work with each other and the laity to move forward from this moment when the Church is reeling from abuse allegations.
Other business the bishops had on their agenda included a number of action items, other than the abuse protocols they will now delay voting on.
Those items include:
• Consideration of a proposed pastoral letter on racism, “The Enduring Call to Love: A Pastoral Letter Against Racism.” “Despite many promising strides made in our country, the ugly cancer of racism still infects our nation,” it says.
“Racist acts are sinful because they violate justice. They reveal a failure to acknowledge the human dignity of the persons offended, to recognize them as the neighbors Christ calls us to love,” it adds. “Every racist act – every such comment, every joke, every disparaging look as a reaction to the color of skin, ethnicity or place of origin – is a failure to acknowledge another person as a brother or sister, created in the image of God.”
• The endorsement of the sainthood cause of Sister Thea Bowman, a descendant of slaves and the only African-American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, who transcended racism to leave a lasting mark on Catholic life in the United States in the late 20th century.
• Approving a budget for 2019 that shows a small surplus, but shows far less for the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services line item due to continuing federal cutbacks in the number of refugees being admitted into the United States.
• Hearing reports from bishops on October’s Synod of Bishops on “Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment,” July’s V Encuentro for Hispanic Catholics in the United States; and recognition of the 40th anniversary of the USCCB’s pastoral statement on persons with disabilities, as well as from the National Advisory Council, a largely lay group that issues comments on agenda items facing the bishops.
The abuse crisis, though, never strayed far from the bishops’ agenda. Also on the agenda were a report from Francesco Cesareo, chairman of the National Review Board, created by the bishops in 2002 as part of its Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People; details from Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles on how a third-party system to report allegations by bishops would work; remarks from Heather Banis, victims assistance coordinate for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles; plus time for the bishops for open discussion of the crisis.
Outside the hotel protesters gathered to call for change and urge action by the bishops to address the widening sex abuse crisis.
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