Right thing

The Vatican did the right thing last week when it called for a joint commission of U.S. bishops and Vatican officials to study and revise some key elements of the bishops' sex abuse norms before granting formal approval.

First, it must be stressed that despite, what other media may say, the Vatican did not reject the bishops' plan, adopted last June at a meeting in Dallas. Instead, it wants to work with the bishops to make some modifications in the plan.

As Bp. Robert Banks said last Friday at a press conference, had the Vatican found the plan unacceptable, it would have sent it back and said, "do it over," as it did to some liturgical documents.

Bp. Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, agreed with that assessment. He called the policy "a basically sound document that needs modification rather than recasting." Bp. Gregory told a press conference in Rome, that the Mixed Commission will fine-tune the norms. The Vatican, he emphasized, did not categorically reject any element of the plan.

Second, as Bp. Banks told the media, priests guilty of the sexual abuse of minors will not be allowed to return to active ministry.

On the whole, the sexual abuse norms, as approved by the bishops, were well done, but they were not perfect. That's hardly surprising given the short amount of time there was to write, then debate them under the scrutiny of the media and the public who rightly demanded immediate action.

At the Dallas meeting, Bp. Banks was among the bishops who pointed out problems with the norms. Some questions raised then and since include: the norms' definition of sexual abuse; the role of the independent review boards; and how the norms work with the code of canon law, which governs the entire church.

It's important to realize that as a part of a universal church, the U.S. church must follow canon law. And the Vatican must be careful about granting exemptions to these laws or risk having them become meaningless.

It will take some work for the mixed committee to reach an agreement in time for the U.S. bishops' meeting Nov. 11-14, but that is their goal.

The Dallas norms and statements from Pope John Paul show the church believes that priests guilty of sexual abuse do not belong in ministry. The job now is agreeing on ways to ensure that procedures meet the requirements of civil and canon law while protecting both the accused and the accuser.

When these policies are approved, it will become even more important that bishops do everything in their power to put them into practice and for Catholics to monitor them.