The June 2002 meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops held in Dallas was characterized by an abundance of rhetoric as well as a significant number of memorable phrases. Bishops have spoken of the meeting as being marked by “intense emotion and profound contrition.” The “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” issued by the bishops at the meeting, speaks of “a crisis without precedent in our times” and acknowledges that the actions of some bishops in the USA have given cause for “enormous pain, anger, and confusion.”

The Charter and a set of accompanying “norms” derived almost verbatim from various parts of the Charter, seem to be the main result of the meeting.Undoubtedly the bishops sincerely wished effectively to confront the current spate of scandals and problems, but there also seemed to be a desire to use those documents as a means of recapturing some favorable public opinion, to give some material to the insatiable media, to settle down the uproar both inside and outside the Catholic Church in the country caused by sensational reporting of clerical sex scandals from recent times as well as from the past, and to regain a measure of credibility for themselves, both collectively and individually.

As far as they go, the Charter and the norms might constitute a small step in the right direction. Although some bishops have spoken of the Charter and norms as “mandatory,” they are presently no such thing. This is because they involve replacing and modifying some of the Canons in the universal law for the Church. Something called a “recognitio” will be sought by the officers of the Conference from the Holy See. This unfortunately could have the effect of placing a heavy burden of adverse publicity on the Holy See should it find itself unable to agree with all the provisions of those documents, which the bishops wish to have the force of law. Unless such a “recognitio” is obtained, of course, there is no legal binding force to the documents, although there seems to be a provision to shame bishops and dioceses which do not comply by making their names public.

Many of the Charter provisions, in a less specific way, were already set out by the Bishops’ Conference in their 1993 document “Restoring Trust,” which appears to have been generally ineffective. Of course, the widespread publicity given to horrible clerical sexual crimes and sins in the last six months have strengthened the words of many bishops with which they now accompany the publication of the new Charter and its norms.

In my view the major defect of this Charter and its norms is what is absent from them. First, there is no clear and unequivocal denunciation of homosexual conduct and nothing pastorally about removing homosexuals from the ministry, from seminaries, and from places of influence in the Church. The overwhelming majority of the recently publicized priests’ sex crimes are homosexual ones, involving adolescent boys. Four of the five most recent defections from the membership of the Conference itself involved homosexual acts (Weakland, O’Connell, Symons, and Ziemann). As one observer put it, dope-addicts should not be pharmacists and alcoholics should not be bartenders, and so homosexuals should not be priests.

Unless the homosexual tree is cut down, all the draconian measures in the world taken against its fruits will not solve anything in the long run. The Conference should loudly declare its belief that homosexual acts, if done with free will and due deliberation, are heinous mortal sins, and that a homosexual orientation or inclination is intrinsically disordered, in the same way an inclination to steal or hate is disordered. To be considered sincere in such an effort, the Conference, it seems, would also have to revoke and repudiate its defective and erroneous document “Always Our Children.”

Second, the origin of much of the tribulation in the Church in the USA is the permissive attitude toward dissent from authentic Catholic moral teaching, especially about sexual matters. The Charter and the norms say nothing about this, but it is clearly one of the principal underpinning causes of the sexual misconduct of many bishops and priests. It is coddling, permitting, and even condoning this dissent which has allowed homosexuality to infiltrate so much of the Church. It is not a very large leap to conclude that if the Church’s magisterium is wrong about, for instance, marital sexual morality, it can just as easily be wrong about any or all other aspects of sexual conduct. Church institutions and such organizations as the Catholic Theological Society of America, as well as many left-wing publications which call themselves Catholic, have expended great energy and newsprint to oppose traditional Catholic doctrines regarding sexual ethics and morality over the past four decades. To suppose that this does not influence the conduct and behavior of both the laity and the clergy is absurd.

The Charter and its norms have some good provisions which may prove helpful, although establishing more bureaucracy would appear to be questionable, especially in view of the proverb: Who will watch the watchmen? While it might not be the immediate concern of the Charter and its norms, questions should surely be asked about the false and harmful advice given to many of the bishops by various kinds of “sexologists,” psychologists, and assorted other experts. Following such faulty counsel, many bishops foolishly had been involved in “recycling” predatory priests. Questions should also be asked about the clinics and treatment centers used by bishops for priests, which are usually uncontrolled and unmonitored by any knowledgeable and competent ecclesiastical authority.

Finally, it is somewhat reassuring that those documents will be revisited after two years, since even now they seem to contain some obvious flaws, and others might disclose themselves in the course of their use. It is also reassuring to know that the officials of the Holy See will review them before giving them any approval.

EDITOR’S POST SCRIPT: I concur fully with what Bishop Bruskewitz has written above. There is just one more item that I believe should be addressed, and that is the clamor made outside the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas where the bishops met. Both a certain vindictiveness and lack of theological understanding were all too apparent. I would advise victims and protesters in general that any vindictiveness be toned down and that they adhere firmly to the defined teaching of the Catholic Church; namely: the priesthood once given in the sacrament of Holy Orders is indelible; it cannot be removed from a priest. The bishops correctly wished to penalize sexual misconduct on the part of priests by removing from them the faculties or permission to exercise the priestly powers they will always possess, and in some cases removing the priests from the clerical state. But they cannot remove the priesthood itself.