At First Things find a piece by Michael J Mazza who is one of the best canon lawyers around and who is also a civil lawyer. He has done yeoman’s work in defense of priests and their good reputations.
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” When Franz Kafka wrote the opening line of his famous story The Trial a century ago, the clerical sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church was a long way off. Yet Josef K.’s tragic fate parallels the experience of many Catholic priests in twenty-first-century America.
Hyperbole? Think again. An elderly priest, still hard at work as pastor of a town parish, may easily find himself removed from his rectory, indefinitely and immediately, without having done anything wrong. The Essential Norms, adopted by the U.S. bishops in 2002 at the same time as the Dallas Charter, require a priest to be removed from ministry the instant there is “sufficient evidence” of an accusation of child sexual abuse. In many situations, the “evidence” supporting an allegation comes only within the pages of a civil complaint, filed by a plaintiff’s attorney on behalf of an alleged victim.
By its very nature such a statement has yet to be proven and is “substantiated” only if and to the extent it is supported by the unilateral affirmations contained in the complaint. While some complaints may contain very detailed assertions, including dates, times, and places where the alleged abuse occurred, other complaints are extremely vague and do not rise to the level of “sufficient evidence.” They are mere allegations.
Dioceses, religious orders, and their liability insurers—eager to put years of scandal behind them—often cut deals that leave priests vulnerable and unable to defend themselves. The plaintiffs’ firms know this. So the lawsuits mount.
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Most of the article visible, but First Things – annoying – put a paywall blocker at the lower part. One might make a guess what it covers up… the last part might go something like this:
While the evil of clerical sexual abuse of minors is a scourge that must be stopped, the answer to the problem does not lie in the intentional abandonment of the rule of law or the deliberate neglect of due process for accused priests. There is no room in the Church for Kafkaesque narratives. Understood in the correct way, as described above, a careful reading of the Essential Norms and a thoughtful application of canon 88 may serve to be powerful tools in the hands of a Catholic bishop or religious superior who seeks to do the right thing in a difficult situation, rendering justice to all parties.
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I believe Dr. Mazza counsels the priest support group Men of Melchizedek. They have developed a model policy that every bishop should at a minimum review and preferably adopt. Perhaps something the USCCB can take up at their next meeting. https://menofmelchizedek.org/mom-model-policy-for-dioceses-eparchies-and-religious-orders
A priest friend of mine was handled in this exact fashion. Someone made a completely fabricated comment about him to the county sheriff’s department. They immediately took it to the county prosecutor. They didn’t hesitate to immediately file charges against him. His bishop didn’t hesitates to immediately remove him from his position and banish him from all public activity. The following investigation made it very clear that the original person was lying (he referenced locations that didn’t even exist – like claiming something happened at a parish hall 5 years before that parish hall had been built), and the original “victim” refused to even file any charges against the priest.
But . . . because the prosecutor was a real jackass, he refused to drop the case. He just let it sit there for over a year. So my friend was stuck in unjustified bishop-imposed exile for over a year, having his reputation blackened and not being allowed to do anything. Finally, the case was dropped, but THEN my friend was stuck in exile for another 6 months as the diocese began it’s own independent investigation which could only begin AFTER the civil investigation was closed. It was only after his name was cleared by the second investigation that he was allowed to return to service.
And after he was found to be completely innocent, he, a former pastor, was relegated to assistant to the assistant parochial vicar type jobs for at least 10 years. And there was never any big headline in the diocesan newspaper declaring his innocence. Just a small blurb on the website under “priest assignments” that he was returning to duty.
Whatever this absurd construct is, it sure as hell isn’t justice.
I should correct my comment – the prosecutor never actually filed charges against my friend. Just “opened a case” – and that was enough for the bishop to strip him of everything and place him in exile.
It struck me the other day that I don’t remember there being a US conference of Catholic bishops that I can remember. Interestingly, when I looked it up, it started in 1966. I guess it was a precursor to Vatican II. So my question is do we really need one? In this day of technology, we are able to communicate instantly with people all over the world. The holy father could communicate with any of these bishops at any time.