Catholic bishops retain 'zero tolerance' policy

CHICAGO -- Three years after the sexual abuse crisis erupted in Boston, the Catholic bishops of the United States voted overwhelmingly yesterday to retain their ''zero tolerance" policy of dismissing from the ministry all abusive priests.

The bishops, promising to maintain their efforts to protect children in the face of an enormous scandal over their past failure to oust abusers, also agreed to set aside $1 million to partially finance a broad study of the causes of abuse within the nation's largest religious denomination.

In an interview, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston pointed out that the bishops supported the revised abuse policies by overwhelming margins: The closest vote was 223 to 4.

''I was very pleased with the vote," he said. ''I think that it indicates that there's still a strong resolution to move forward and there's no backpedaling."

Referring to the bishops' response to the crisis over the past three years, he added, ''I'm not saying we did everything perfectly, but at least there was a very decisive response and one that was an attempt to face the issues, to try and quantify it, and now to try and contextualize it and to see if we can identify causes to be able to make sure that this sad history won't repeat itself."

The steps were derided by critics, including a leading victim advocacy organization, who said a variety of wording changes approved by the bishops effectively weakened the abuse policies, first adopted in 2002. But the bishops insisted that the wording changes were not substantive, and one leading bishop, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, dismissed critics as ''enemies of the church."

The bishops also promised to enforce a much-anticipated Vatican directive imposing restrictions on the admissions of gays to seminaries, which is expected to be released soon. Some bishops view the abuse crisis as linked to the number of gay men in the priesthood. Bishop John M. D'Arcy, a Boston native who heads the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in Indiana said, in a reference to the high number of cases involving the abuse of postpubescent boys, ''this is always referred to as pedophilia, yet our own study said 81 percent was homosexuality versus teenage boys."

Also during their meeting, the bishops voted overwhelmingly yesterday to prepare a statement explaining the church's opposition to the death penalty for debate in November. The bishops recently launched a new campaign against capital punishment, citing a poll indicating that Catholic support for the death penalty is falling, and said they wanted to prepare a statement reflecting the solidification of the church's position over the past quarter-century.

By their votes yesterday, the bishops approved for five years slightly revised versions of three documents, approved in Dallas in 2002, that responded to the clergy abuse crisis. One of the documents, the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, offers their promise to permanently remove from ministry any priest or deacon who has ever sexually abused a minor; another document, the Essential Norms, is a set of church laws that outline the process for handling accusations against priests; and a third document describes their pledge as bishops to hold one another accountable.

The documents were first approved by the bishops six months after a nationwide church crisis began with reports in The Boston Globe about the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston's failure to remove sexually abusive priests from the ministry. The bishops later confirmed the seriousness of the problem after commissioning a study that found that nationwide 4,392 priests, about 4 percent of all priests, had been accused of abusing 10,667 individuals from 1950 to 2002.

Critics of the church, including a few dozen who protested outside the bishops' hotel, said the policies do not go far enough. They said the bishops have not publicly identified all abusive priests and have not sought special penalties for bishops who abused minors or for bishops who failed to remove abusive priests from the ministry.

''We shouldn't be surprised they claim everything is hunky dory," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Clohessy and Barbara Blaine, president of the victim advocacy group, said one of the revisions approved by the bishops yesterday weakened the church's commitment to disciplining abusive priests, in cases in which the abuses occurred long ago. The church's code of canon law includes statutes of limitations; the victims argued that the bishops lessened the commitment they made in Dallas to seek waivers from those statutes in all cases. They also said the bishops were weakening a lay National Review Board by requiring that its members be vetted by local bishops and that it become a regular part of the bureaucracy of the bishops' conference.

But George, the Chicago archbishop, dismissed the criticism, saying, ''They always say that, don't they?"

George, the vice president of the bishops conference and the bishops' lead negotiator with the Vatican on sexual abuse policy, said he did not believe the proposed revisions would lead to any change in the way bishops handle allegations against priests. And, he said, the National Review Board's status would not change. He said that the board was never independent of the bishops and that all appointments to national posts by the bishops' conference are already vetted by local bishops.

''We have made commitments in Dallas, first of all, to reach out to those who have been victimized . . . and secondly, to deal with those who are perpetrators," he said. ''We have kept those promises, with some difficulty and sometimes unevenly, but those promises have been kept."

There was little public debate on any of the documents; Bishop Edward T. Hughes, of Metuchen, N.J., who is retired spoke against the zero tolerance policy, saying, ''Many of our priests are still anxious and uncertain, still believing that an accusation is still tantamount to being judged guilty."

Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz, of Lincoln, Neb., said the promise by bishops to hold one another accountable ''gives the impression of being nothing but a cheap PR ploy" because bishops report only to the Vatican, not to the bishops conference.

The study the bishops agreed to fund was part of their promise in 2002. The bishops have already completed a study of the scope of abuse in the church; the new study is supposed to examine the causes and context. The bishops estimated that the study would cost $2 million to $5 million, but said they believe they can obtain grants for much of the cost.

O'Malley, who rarely speaks at bishops' conferences, jumped up to defend the study when a number of bishops questioned the cost. O'Malley said the study would provide a context for abuse in the church, saying he disagreed with people who believe priests are more likely to abuse children than others. ''I don't believe that, and I think a study like this will help people understand this is a human and a societal problem."

Several bishops spoke with anticipation of the Vatican document that will instruct seminaries on whether to ban or restrict gay applicants.

O'Malley, in the interview, said of the expected Vatican document on gay seminarians, ''I don't think it will be a blanket ban, but the bar will be high."

''As I understand it, the directives will allow us to distinguish different cases, but obviously the candidates have to be capable of living a celibate life and have to have demonstrated that previously to coming into the seminary," he said.

George said during a press conference that ''anyone who has been part of a gay subculture or had lived promiscuously as a heterosexual would not be admitted."

Bishop John C. Nienstedt of New Ulm, Minn., said during a press conference that US bishops were looking forward to the Vatican guidance on gay seminarians. ''The teaching of the church is based on very good scientific data," he said. ''Science has never proven that there is a genetic cause of homosexuality, but behavioral sciences have told us that it's a trauma that's caused somewhere in between 18 months and three years, when a person is developing his or her sexual identity, and because this is a trauma, it works itself out in different ways.

''So it's a huge complex issue, and I'm grateful to the Holy See that they're going to address themselves to that."

A variety of protesters gathered outside the hotel where the bishops met calling for a greater role for the laity, gay rights, the ordination of women, the ouster of bishops who protected abusive priests, and a variety of other policy changes. The American Life League sent a group of red-shirted college students holding signs declaring, ''We love our bishops," but also calling on George to deny Communion to US Senator Richard J. Durbin because the Illinois Democrat supports abortion rights.

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.