Commentary; Posted: 5/15/02

Rebuilding trust within the Catholic Church

By Don Heinzman

Catholics in the Dioceses of St. Paul and Minneapolis and of St. Cloud understandably are unsettled over allegations of sexual abuse by priests and even by bishops.

They can take comfort, however, knowing their leader bishops have and continue to take the lead in developing and implementing policies dealing with sexual misconduct.

Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who favors a zero tolerance policy, chairs the National Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse whose report will be important when the U. S. bishops meet in June in Dallas.

His colleague, Bishop John Kinney of the St. Cloud Diocese chaired the U.S. Bishops Ad Hoc Committee on the Sexual Abuse of Minors that wrote three volumes of educational materials, guidelines and recommendations to help bishops develop strong diocesan sexual misconduct policies.

How unfortunate that many Bishops paid little attention to this report.

Both Dioceses have in place and are applying sexual misconduct policies that call for immediately investigating allegations of all diocesan personnel, suspending the duties during investigation, counseling with the victims, alerting civil authorities of any violation of the civil and criminal statutes and dealing with the perpetrator once guilt is established.

To insure compliance with the policies, Bishop Kinney has suggested an audit of the policies and their application by an audit board comprised mostly of lay outsiders, similar to an audit of financial affairs.

Archbishop Flynn has endorsed the audit and plans to recommend it to the bishops in Dallas.

Furthermore, Bishop Kinney has scheduled four listening sessions throughout the diocese for anyone who wants to speak about clergy sexual misconduct and how church officials are dealing with it. Two are scheduled May 31 at St. Augustine Parish cafeteria in St. Cloud and June 7 at St. Edward Parish in Princeton.

The listening sessions in the St. Cloud Diocese are an important step that opens the process of communicating with anxious members about clergy sexual abuse and applications of policies to deal with it.

Catholics, who have been amazingly patient and steadfast in their faith during this crisis, expect to see clear and decisive action to address this scandal when the bishops meet in June. They expect their diocesan leaders to vote for a policy that counsels and assists the victims, one that deals completely and mercifully with the alleged perpetrators and cooperates with civil authorities in prosecuting those who violate the law on sexual misconduct.

In addition they expect to see a policy that prohibits these perpetrators from ever ministering to minors and prevents the relocation of these priests either to one church or another diocese.

Such a policy will help rebuild the trust that has been lost during this crisis in the Catholic Church.

Readers can view a copy of the Sexual Misconduct Policy of the St. Cloud Diocese on the Internet at www.stclouddiocese.org.

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