Response to scandal criticized
By Rachel Zoll
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — The president of an association of Roman Catholic religious orders told his colleagues that American bishops have been "paralyzed in remorse" over sex abuse and have been scapegoating molester clergy to regain the public's trust.
The Rev. Canice Connors, president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, said demands from victims have led U.S. bishops to abandon the belief in redemption for sinners — even when they are abusive priests.
The remarks were among the most openly defiant from a U.S. Catholic leader since clerical sex abuse scandals started hitting the church in waves earlier this year.
A victims' advocate denounced the speech as arrogant and out of touch.
Connors made the comments earlier this week in a closed session at the annual meeting of the superiors' conference, which represents 15,000 U.S. priests in orders such as the Jesuits and Benedictines. The text was released yesterday.
"In paying this purchase price for their moral credibility, the bishops in effect could be perceived to have become one with the voices of the media, unreconciled victims and a partially informed Catholic public in scapegoating abusers," said Connors, a Conventual Franciscan.
Today, the last day of the meeting, the conference will vote on how the sex abuse policy that U.S. bishops approved two months ago in Dallas can be adapted to religious communities.
Connors, who has spent years overseeing treatment for abusive priests, was a consultant to the committee that drafted the bishops' plan. But he said this week that he felt the bishops' provision to force abusers out of all church jobs and possibly the priesthood was too harsh. He believes some offenders can be rehabilitated.
He also said the term "zero tolerance" — often used by victims advocates to mean ousting all abusers from the priesthood — was a "war slogan" that was inappropriate for the church.
William Ryan, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, declined to comment.
Mark Serrano, a national board member of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the speech was an insult "to victims, bishops and regular Catholics."
"Catholics want moral action for the safety for their children, but what they're getting from this church leader is arrogance," he said.
Connors began his speech by noting how painful the scandal has been, then segued into a wry commentary on the most outspoken critics of the church's response to abuse.
"Are we having fun yet?" he quipped.
He went on to accuse the bishops of overreacting to the April statement by Pope John Paul II that no abusers should be priests.
The prelates launched an "identify and expel mission" that has been unfair to men who have undergone treatment and recovered, he said.
Connors also called a speech given by Bishop Wilton Gregory at the Dallas meeting "shock rhetoric." Gregory, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the abuse crisis may be the gravest the church has faced. He also apologized to victims.
Connors acknowledged that some church leaders failed to take action against guilty priests and reach out to victims, and that some offenders cannot recover.
But he felt church leaders had ignored "reasonable analysis."
Connors said, "This totalization of all abusers, ironically camouflaged in a concern for protecting children, creates a legitimized target population for venomous language and violent action."
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