press releases

Cardinals Lack "Firm Purpose of Amendment"

APRIL 25, 2002

Chicago, April 25, 2002 --"We are appalled at the failure of leadership of the Cardinals. They went into the meeting in Rome talking about some of the key issues. They came out of the meeting with nothing of substance, " said Linda Pieczynski, spokesperson for Call To Action.

"The Cardinals are saying that this is a serious matter. But what are they going to do about it? In Catholic teaching, forgiveness of sin requires 'a firm purpose of amendment,' a determination not to repeat the sinfor which the penitent is seeking absolution. What procedures and structures will they put in place to make sure that our churches, our parishes, become 'abuse free zones?' The overall tone of the communiqué at the end of the meeting was protecting the church, by which they mean the hierarchy," Pieczynski said.

"Going into the Rome meeting, there seemed to be growing consensus among the Cardinals that priests who abuse minors should be removed from ministry. Now we hear they will remove only "notorious, serial, predatory" abusers, and that all others are to be left to the discretion of the local bishop. The discretion of the local bishop got us into this situation. CTA calls for the removal from ministry of all priests who sexually abuse minors."

Pieczynski, an attorney by profession, wondered what happened between the Pope stating that sex abuse was a crime, and the communiqué's failure to require the church to report sexual abusers of minors to civil authorities. "Members of the clergy should report allegations of any kind of sexual abuse of minors to the local law enforcement authority whenever there is a suspicion that child abuse has taken place. This is the standard to which doctors, nurses, psychologists, teachers and other people who have numerous contacts with children are held. There is no logical reason that clergy should not be held to the same standard, even if their state law does not require it. Furthermore, this reporting should be done immediately, so that accusations can be investigated by
trained child abuse investigators before the alleged perpetrator is alerted.

"We were pleased that the Cardinals, going into the meeting, were proposing a national panel of lay people to monitor the Church's handling of sexual abuse cases. But our hopes were dashed. It seems that the bishops expect they can clean up the mess themselves, even though the mess is of the bishops' own making. Cardinal McCarrick, in his interviews after the meeting, thought that this lay panel was included in their communiqué. What happened to it?

"We join our voices to that of the multitude of Catholics calling for lay involvement in making sure we are never in this situation again. We need the sort of panel the Cardinals were talking about. The important principle is that the panel be truly independent of the bishops, in order to check the bishops' exercise of power. This panel should ensure that every diocese in the U.S. adopts the national guidelines or 'best practices' that we expect will emerge from the U.S. Bishops' meeting in June. The panel should also make sure that individual dioceses are actually following these procedures," said Pieczynski.

All the U.S. Bishops will meet in Dallas in June to discuss their response to these issues. This is an opportunity to display the leadership that the Catholic community is seeking from them. We expect they will (1) remove offending priests from ministry; (2) set up an independent lay panel to oversee the sex abuse response, and (3) require clergy to report all accusations of abuse to civil authorities, whether required by state law or not.

Pieczynski said, "We are concerned that comments coming out of the Vatican will have the effect of blaming gay priests for this crisis. We urge the Cardinals to address the real issues instead, the underlying structural problems which led to the secrecy, cover-up, and the silencing of victims by the bishops, which have nothing to do with gay priests.

"We don't think it matters whether a priest is gay or straight, male or female. We want priests who are sexually mature, and have integrated their sexuality into their priesthood. We need to screen out all candidates with stunted sexuality who might sexually abuse minors. There are many sexually mature priests who serve their communities well, and whose homosexual orientation is incidental to their abilities."

Some of the comments by the Cardinals about homosexuality seem to contradict the U.S. bishops own experts. We attach a sheet of quotes from some of them.

Call To Action is a national organization of 25,000 laity, religious, priests and bishops with its national office in Chicago. It has 40 local chapters and advocates for reforms in the Catholic Church such as the ordination of women, optional celibacy for priests, more focus on the church's social justice teaching, and consultation with the Catholic people on church decision-making and human sexuality issues. Its web site is at http://www.cta-usa.org.

Contact: Linda Pieczynski, 630-655-8783, or at home, 630-323-6924; Don Wedd at Call To Action, 773-404-0004 ext. 270

EXPERTS ON HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF MINORS

"No mainstream researcher would suggest that there is any link between homosexuality and true pedophilia, that is, sexual attraction of an adult to prepubescent minors....The rejoinder to this is the fact that most victims of priests are young males. But this, too, is easily open to misinterpretation. Most priests who molest minors were themselves molested as minors; their sexual abuse is for many of them a kind of reenactment of their own abuse and may have little to do with their sexual orientation. I have known some heterosexually oriented males who molested young males....The issue is therefore not so much homosexuality but rather their stunted emotional development."
Rev. Stephen Rossetti, psychologist and sex abuse consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
"The Catholic Church and Child Sexual Abuse," America, April 22, 2002

"Some of this has been about homosexual men giving in to temptation with adolescent males. At the same time, we should make it clear that homosexuals are no more risk to children than heterosexuals. In terms of the bigger picture, there are every bit as many heterosexual males giving into temptation with female adolescents."
Dr. Fred S. Berlin, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
as quoted in "Homosexuality in Priesthood Is Under Increasing Scrutiny," New York Times, April 19 2002

"There is no reason to believe that priests become sexual offenders of adolescent males either because they are striving to be celibate or because of their sexual orientation. Some priests who have sex with adolescent boys have adult heterosexual adjustment. They have sex with adolescent males for a number of reasons: social immaturity, identification with the adolescent, lack of opportunity to be intimate with women. Adolescents are seen as more 'feminine' than adult men."
Rev. Curtis Bryant, S.J., psychologist and former Director of Inpatient Clinical Services , St. Luke Institute
"Psychological Treatment of Priest Sex Offenders," America, April 1, 2002

"What you may have is not so much a problem with gay people, but with people who have kind of an immature sexuality or a conflicted sexuality."
David Finkelhor, Director
Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire
as quoted in "Researchers Caution Catholic Church," Associated Press Yahoo!News, March 22, 2002

| HOME |

Call To Action
2135 W. Roscoe
Chicago, IL 60618

tel. 773-404-0004 | fax. 773-404-1610 | e-mail. cta@cta-usa.org