Print Issue: June 20, 2002

USCCB President: Bishops Are Responsible For Crisis

By Gretchen Keiser, Staff Writer

DALLAS - Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, set the tone for their landmark June 2002 meeting when he said "the Catholic Church in the United States is in a very grave crisis, perhaps the gravest we have faced," and that the bishops themselves are responsible.

"This crisis is not about a lack of faith in God," he said. "The crisis, in truth, is about a profound loss of confidence by the faithful in our leadership as shepherds because of our failures in addressing the crime of the sexual abuse of children and young people by priests and church personnel."

Placing the responsibility squarely on the bishops, he often used phrases from penitential prayers, saying penance is necessary and it "is not the obligation of the church at large in the United States, but the responsibility of the bishops ourselves."

Structuring his presidential address June 13 around "confession, contrition and resolve," the USCCB president said bishops "are the ones" who allowed priest abusers to stay in ministry and reassigned them to communities where they continued to abuse, who didn't report criminal actions of priests to civil authorities, "who worried more about the possibility of scandal than in bringing about the kind of openness that helps prevent abuse," and who "at times responded to victims and their families as adversaries and not as suffering members of the Church."

In the name of the bishops, he asked for forgiveness from victim-survivors, from their parents and families, from deacons, Religious and laity of the church, and from faithful priests.

He also said candidly that among the bishops themselves "there is a lot of anger . . . righteous anger" because a few bishops did not implement standards for handling child sexual abuse cases that were adopted by the USCCB in 1992 after seven years of study and listening sessions.

"The vast majority of bishops embraced these principles, made them the standard for policies on sexual abuse in their dioceses and, therefore, contributed effectively to the protection of children in the church," Bishop Gregory said, but this "has been completely overshadowed by the imprudent decisions of a small number of bishops during the past 10 years. It is as if the fabric of the good work that has been accomplished had never existed or had completely unraveled. The anger over this is very real and very understandable. I know. I feel it myself. But I cannot remain there. And neither can any of you."

He asked the bishops to "be models of forgiveness to one another" at a time when reconciliation and healing is needed in the church so drastically that "it will never happen unless God's grace provides a flood of forgiveness."