Area bishop pleased with conference’s outcome
Bishop Anthony Bosco of the Greensburg Diocese said he was pleased with the final resolution that was passed at the U.S. Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops. “My hope is that people believe that bishops are acting vigorously to address this problem. I hope that the people most upset will believe that we are serious,” Bosco said in a conference call Friday night, just hours after the bishops had concluded their historic meeting.
The policy passed Friday, by a 239-13 vote, stops just short of the “zero tolerance” clause that many victim groups had wanted. Instead under the resolution, priests accused of abuse would technically remain priests but they would be removed from any church work, including the celebration of Mass, teaching in parochial schools and even soup kitchen duties.
Under the guidelines, accused priests could still be defrocked, but such a decision would ultimately be left to individual bishops and diocese review boards, which include lay church members.
Bosco said that the new rules will now be sent to Rome for review where he hopes the Vatican does not attempt to make any major changes.
“The Vatican might try to touch them up a bit but hopefully they will look at the size of the vote as well. The Vatican must understand that we are dealing with civil law here and that bishops are not above the law,” Bosco said.
Bosco also admitted that the church leadership is now examining pedophilia differently and that mistakes were made in the past.
“Serious mistakes have been made. In the past, we had inadequate reactions from some bishops. Some bishops thought that through Christianity and forgiveness priests could change. My problem is that we now know that we are not dealing with solely a moral problem but rather a serious psychological disturbance. It’s not just a matter of the person being a sinner,” Bosco remarked.
“Pedophilia is a major taboo rooted in human nature and must be treated as such,” he added.
Bosco also supports the mandatory reporting of sexual abuse cases to the proper law enforcement agencies, a move that some in the Vatican also question.
“We have mandatory reporting in schools. Why are priests any different? We act like we want to protect children from their teachers but not their priests. Priests should not be handled with kid glovesm,” Bosco said.
Bosco predicted that some priests would be unhappy with the new guidelines but that many of the new regulations were already in place in his own diocese.
“Some priests will be upset I am sure. But I have already been operating on this premise anyway. The difference is that the United States bishops are now asking for these norms to become church law,” Bosco remarked.
He also said that he felt it would be impossible to please all parties involved in the scandal and that the bishops tried to deal with the scandal in the best way possible throughout the week.
“Some victims might say that it doesn’t go far enough and that the bishops are now off the hook. But when we came here we knew we were in a no-win situation. We could not have done anything that would have made everyone happy. I can tell you though that the bishops were very intense about this and there was a major consensus for change,” Bosco said.