 Photo: AFP |
Accusations of sex with minors -- mainly teenage boys and girls, but sometimes also children -- have been made in at least 17 US dioceses, deeply shaking the nation's 64 million Catholics, the largest US denomination.
Following an unprecedented meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican last week to discuss the sex scandal that has engulfed the US church, US Roman Catholic cardinals announced Friday that they support a "zero-tolerance" policy toward abusive priests.
Washington DC Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said in an interview on Fox News on Sunday that if any priest would engage in sex with minors "it would have to mean that he is a sick man and therefore shouldn't be in the ministry. He would be out."
However removing a priest for a past case of sexual abuse is more complicated, McCarrick said, noting that he is "uncomfortable" about cases where, for example, 30 years ago a young priest became "infatuated with a . . . 17-year-old girl, something happened, he straightened out, (and) he's never had any trouble after that."
On a case like that "I think I want to pray about it (and) talk to lay people and get advice," McCarrick said.
The 300 US bishops are to discuss proposals issued from the Vatican in an attempt to hammer out a unified policy on handling sexual abusing priests at a June meeting in Dallas, Texas.
Chicago Cardinal Francis George, speaking on CBS television, said that it was difficult to kick a priest out of the church under the current rules.
"You have to put him on trial and it takes about a year," George said. "And you may lose." Priests "have rights, by reason of baptism and ordination," he said.
Both George and McCarrick insisted that despite the high-profile media coverage, priests who sexually abuse young parishioners were not a widespread phenomenon.
"So often the impression is given that this is an epidemic," McCarrick said, stating that sexual abuse involves less than two percent of all priests. However the scandal is "hurting the church's credibility because it wasn't handled right," he said.
For Massachusetts attorney Mitchell Garabedian, interviewed on CBS television, church leaders must "admit their unconditional guilt, whether it be the pedophile himself or the supervisor of the pedophile."
Garabedian, who said he has represented 140 victims of church sexual abuse since 1994, said that Catholic leaders also have to end the secrecy surrounding the scandals. "Secrecy only fosters more secrecy which fosters more child abuse," he said.
"The church's credibility is at stake here," he emphasized. "None of the leaders within the church seem to understand that."
Chester Gillis, a priest and theologian at Georgetown University, sees the crisis as "an opportunity for the church to redeem itself."
"Largely the American bishops are responsible for this problem," said Gillis, interviewed on CBS. "If they take the proper measures and put into place draconian policies . . . it would reassure the American public, Catholic and non-Catholic."
A Newsweek magazine poll of 1,000 US adults found that 55 percent of Americans are critical of the US Catholic church hierarchy for failing to properly address the issue.
The Newsweek poll, in the magazine's Monday issue, follows a Gallup survey finding that only about half of Americans have a positive view of Catholicism following the sex abuse scandal, down from about two-thirds in 2000.