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Bishops Expected to Vote on Plan to Deal With Sexual Abuse

Aired June 14, 2002 - 14:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Now on to Dallas, Texas, where the nation's Catholic bishops are expected to vote on a plan to cleanse the Catholic ministry of sexual abusers. The idea being considered would push the church closer to a policy of zero tolerance, although they are not officially calling it that.

CNN's Leon Harris brings us the latest from the bishops conference in Dallas -- hi there, Leon.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Fredricka, once again -- hello, folks. Yes, the bishops here have taken a break. They have been probably recessed for about 25 minutes or so. And they were spending the morning and the early part of the afternoon going over the language. And we were told coming in that many of these bishops were also canon lawyers.

And, boy, have we seen the lawyers in action today. They have been parsing over the specific language. And when I say "specific," I mean specific. They would spend at least, you know, minutes -- or expanded periods of time discussing whether or not a certain word should go either before another word or after another word -- that sort of thing.

But there have also been some very interesting moments as well. We were handed the document that they are now going over. This is the revised version of that document the ad hoc committee prepared, which went over what the policies were going to be in terms of dealing with sexually abusive priests. And we do see now -- for the first time today, we are now seeing in writing something that we can call a zero- tolerance policy. However, it doesn't say zero tolerance.

But you judge for yourself. Here are the words that we have got here: It says, "Diocese and policy will provide effective immediately that for even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor, past, present or future, the offending cleric will not remain in ministry and will not receive a future assignment."

Now, they are still going over this, and it has yet to be voted upon. In fact, there is no guarantee it will be voted upon today. We will stick around all day to find out for sure whether or not.

But a question came up just a little while ago, and a serious one from very serious corners, the Vatican. Whether or not word we are getting right now, word that the Vatican may not be on the same page as the bishops here.

Let's check in now with Jason Carroll who is actually speaking with a very important member of the body here who had something very important to say about that.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And that would be Cardinal Roger Mahoney from Los Angeles. In fact, I spoke to him just a few moments ago, and we talked about that particular issue. And basically what he is saying is that, first of all, in terms of zero tolerance, that is a term that is really not used here, even though as you said if you look at some of the language, it clearly spells out that this is zero-tolerance policy of sorts. But there are a number of bishops -- a number of clerics who do not like the term "zero tolerance." But that is something that they have definitely come up with.

Now, also there is a report today in the "National Catholic Reporter" basically saying that a number of unnamed Vatican sources say, look, the idea of zero tolerance is simply not going to work here. "Here" meaning at the Vatican.

Cardinal Mahoney says, you know, that doesn't really matter, simply because that the U.S. Conference of Bishops have it within their power to pass some sort of a policy, and in this case, it will be a two-year policy, outlining zero tolerance without Vatican approval. So basically what they are saying is, look, we don't need Vatican approval in order to come up with some sort of a national policy for our bishops and our priest to follow.

So once again, it appears as if they are working very diligently trying to come up with this policy that they are going to end up voting on at the end of the day.

HARRIS: And of course, we'll do some more digging on this to see whether or not this is a nuance that we have not really noticed very much before. But what I also heard Cardinal Mahoney saying was that this policy, if it is enacted here, it will be in effect for two years for the American bishops here. But then he said it will be revised or it will be reviewed once again, and then at that point sent on to Vatican, correct?

CARROLL: And I also want to bring up another point here. I mean, just to give you some perspective. The idea that the Vatican does not approve of zero tolerance really isn't anything really that's news. We have heard that before. And in fact, when the pope called the U.S. cardinals to Rome just a few months ago, he made it clear that he believed in the power of conversion. And what he basically means by that is let's say that you have a priest that may have had an offense in the past. He believes that perhaps there is still a chance that this priest can redeem himself.

So while he wanted the bishops to address the problem of sexual abuse, he also wanted to -- he also wanted them to remember the idea, the religious idea of redemption. And so I think they are still in some ways going to have the grapple with that.

There is another point here that I also want to bring up. The Vatican was also very clear about the idea of laicization or defrocking a priest. They want to make sure that a priest has due process. And what they have done in this particular case is they have gotten around that idea by saying in this particular document, look, if we find out that there's a priest that has had some sort of a serious allegation of sexual abuse, we can remove this priest from ministry. And once again, you do not need Vatican approval to do that. However, if a priest is removed from ministry, that priest always has the option at that point to appeal to that Vatican.

HARRIS: But then, right before they took the break, we heard them start to being the debate about if he is put in that situation, what is he allowed to do?

CARROLL: Absolutely.

HARRIS: So there you go. There are so many different layers here, and there are so many more discussions that are going to have to take place. We don't know when exactly the vote is going to take place. Hopefully, it will happen this evening, and the minute that it does happen, we will know. And of course, once the result is in, you will have it right here on CNN. And that's all for now from Dallas. Let's go back to Atlanta.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks, Leon and Jason. I guess we could always carry over into tomorrow. And if it does, of course, we will bring you that tomorrow.

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