Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Sunday Morning

Who are the Americans that make up the Catholic denomination?

Aired April 28, 2002 - 08:13   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the current priest sex abuse scandal has put the national spotlight on the Catholic church, but who are the Americans that make up this powerful denomination?

Our Garrick Utley takes a look at the diversity within the Catholic church.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARRICK UTLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a great day for Irish Catholics, the St. Patrick's Day parade, marching past St. Patrick's Cathedral on New York's Fifth Avenue.

Yes, the current cardinal of New York is of Irish descent, but his successor, it is thought, may well be Hispanic.

Three-quarters of the growth of Catholics in America comes from Hispanics. In New York City, Spanish language services are held in more than 1/3 of the city's parishes.

In Los Angeles, now the largest archdiocese in the nation, 60 percent of Catholics are Spanish speaking.

It's the same power of human demographics that changed the church when Irish, Italian and other Catholic immigrants arrived in their new world, established their own communities, and worshipped in their own languages.

(on camera): Add up the numbers of the faithful, and the United States Catholic church is healthy. 63 million strong and growing, because it is changing.

But then there's another number that's moving in the wrong direction, and fast.

(voice-over): It is the critical shortage of priests. For every two priests who die or retire, there is barely one to take his place. Of the nearly 20,000 parishes in the country, more than 10 percent have no priest of their own.

SCOTT APPLEBY, NOTRE DAME U.: The recruitment of seminarians has been difficult for many years now. The lack of support in the culture, the questioning of celibacy as indeed a path to holiness, or whether or not celibacy itself is some kind of pathology. UTLEY: The bottom line, priests, as well as nuns, are becoming an ecclesiastical endangered species, with ever fewer to minister to the growing number of the faithful.

Garrick Utley, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: All right. We're going to take a closer look now at the crisis in the priesthood. We've received a number of e-mails. We thank you for that.

O'BRIEN: We have with us this morning three guests to field them.

Chester Gillis, a theology professor at Georgetown University, a fine institution, joining us from Tampa. Bill D'Antonio is a sociology professor at Catholic University, that's an OK institution. He's in Washington this morning. And David O'Reilly, no relation to Bill, we're told, is a religion reporter for "The Philadelphia Inquirer." He covered the recent Vatican summit.

Now, I'm going to try to have balance here, because Miles went to Georgetown, so I'll make sure, Bill, I give you plenty of e-mail and airtime, OK.

BILL D'ANTONIO, CATHOLIC U.: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: You bet.

O'BRIEN: Should we give the phone number out, though?

PHILLIPS: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: The number to call -- since they won't give us a toll free number, we decided we're going to take collect calls. Feel free to call us collect at 404-221-1855. We're tired of making you pay for all that hold time. 404-221-1855. We will accept the charges.

Should we get right to the e-mail?

PHILLIPS: Let's do it.

O'BRIEN: We've got good ones.

PHILLIPS: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: This one comes from Kevin: "So far, only the American Catholic church has come under fire for this type of behavior. What about the Catholic church worldwide? Surely this can't only be happening here."

Mr. Gillis, why don't you take that.

CHESTER GILLIS, GEORGETOWN U.: Well, the e-mailer is correct. It's not only happening here. Many countries -- Australia, Ireland, Poland, Mexico -- have reported incidents such as this. The depth and the extent is not to the same dimension that it is in America, but clearly it's not uniquely an American problem in the church, and perhaps the policies that need to be put in place would be universal policies rather than strictly American policies.

O'BRIEN: Would you like to add in on that, Mr. D'Antonio?

D'ANTONIO: Yes, I'm glad the question was raised. It is indeed a world policy. Last year, of course, there was the revelation of the sexual abuse of women, including many nuns, in Africa and parts of Europe and the United States and that simply adds to the dimensions of the problem, and certainly to the celibacy problem. It's a very complex issue.

PHILLIPS: David O'Reilly, I'm going to have you take this phone call. Betty, from Virginia. Go ahead -- Betty.

BETTY, CALLER: Yes, on the crisis in the priesthood, I would like CNN or someone on CNN to address why no one has been sent to prison for this, if there have been hundreds of children molested.

DAVID O'REILLY, "THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER": Well, there have indeed been priests that have gone to prison. We have some from the Philadelphia area.

The problem is, victims are often reluctant to come forward. When they do come forward, they often ask authorities to keep it private. They want their name not in the public light. And unfortunately, this cult of secrecy has protected a lot of priests.

That's changing now. But there are some arrests, and perhaps there'll be more in the future.

O'BRIEN: Here's a good e-mail, to continue this discussion.

Kirk Abrahams in Jamaica has this: "I am just not sure why all of the sudden, or recently, all these priests who seemed to have been implicated in wrongdoing just are coming out, some over 30 years. Why are people just now talking about it? And why was it being covered up for so long"?

Mr. Gillis, you want to try that?

GILLIS: Well, I think that it has been a culture of secrecy, and I think that the church, initially, was trying to protect itself and the victims from scandal or from further embarrassment, for the church or for the victims.

It was a wrongheaded policy, as it turns out, clearly, and it should have had the light of day. So many of these cases are very old, and the church now has rectified the situation and is trying to be much more forthright about the cases and bring them to legal authorities. It's been a longtime coming.

And also, the fact that victims have been reluctant to come forward. I think the culture, the general culture, was one in which victims were shamed by this and not willing to come out. But with the recent revelations, I think they've been emboldened, and they are more than willing to come out, and they are supported by many people in their allegations. And that's changed things very much.

PHILLIPS: This e-mail from Dane Eight. I just printed this one off of the computer, because I have received a number of these in the past couple of weeks.

Bill D'Antonio, I'm going to have you take this one -- the biblical perspective. This one is quoting the Bible, a couple of different verses.

"A bishop, then must be, the husband of one wife. First Timothy, another one. Ordain elders in every city as I have appointed thee. If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having children, not accused of riot or unruly, for a bishop must be blameless, not giving heed to commandments of men, that turn from truth." Titus.

I'm curious, what is your take, because this subject matter has come up a lot, this biblical perspective. Some say it's against the Bible to be married, have children. Others say the Bible promotes it.

D'ANTONIO: Well, we do know that in fact some, if not all of the disciples, Peter and others, were married. And we know that throughout the first 11 centuries, we had a married clergy.

We now have married priests in the Catholic church, and I've been surprised at the number of Catholic friends of mine who were not aware that Episcopal and Lutheran clergy who have come over to Rome may be allowed to become active priests, may be ordained in the Roman Catholic church, and maintain their married status. We have about 100 of those priests in the Roman Catholic church today.

So it's rather, to me, it's arbitrary and capricious, that we do not really move towards returning to active ministry of the thousands of married Roman Catholic priests who would like to return to active ministry.

There is nothing in the Bible that I am aware of that prevents that.

PHILLIPS: Should there be one standard, Chester?

GILLIS: Well, the one standard now is celibacy. I mean, that is what the one standard has been.

But Bill is correct, that historically that has not always been the case. And this is a discipline of the church. It's not a doctrine of the church. So it could be changed. It would require the pope to change it, but he could change it at his own discretion.

It's unlikely that this present pope will change it, but clearly celibacy is a mode of conversation within the Vatican and in churches around the world, and I don't think that it's going to go away. And it'll probably be in the back of the minds of cardinals as they elect the next pope, since John Paul II is in the twilight of his papacy. People are probably thinking, will there be a restructuring, will there be change. And possibly there will, but I don't anticipate it in this administration of the church.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's go back to the e-mail.

Dane Eight has this one for us: "If all it takes is a few Hail Mary's to put a sinful Catholic back in the good graces of the church, why can't it do the same thing with the priest"?

Good question. The Catholic church -- this is an underpinning of the Catholic church, after all -- David O'Reilly.

O'REILLY: Say the question again please? The question is, why can't a few Hail Mary's put a priest back?

O'BRIEN: Yes, the basic question is, if Catholic teaching is there is always forgiveness, how can you have a zero tolerance policy?

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: That's one of the tough ones they're struggling with right now. How do you reconcile Christian notions of forgiveness with a one strike and you're out policy. I think that that's going to be a major debate that the bishops are going to struggle with at their conference in Dallas in June.

Right now, there seems to be universal agreement among the prelates that a serial predator is out instantly, no more protection for them. The hard question is, if a priest committed an offense 30 years ago and it comes out now, what do you do with him.

They don't have the answers. I don't think there is an easy answer for that one, and I think they're going to struggle hard in Dallas on that one.

O'BRIEN: Prof. Gillis?

GILLIS: Well, I think that there is a difference between forgiveness and criminal activity, and the church -- it's a theological category, forgiveness, and certainly even in redemption. But redemption and rehabilitation may be two different things.

So the church can forgive and God forgives, always. But if there has been criminal activity, there may be an accountability on a different level, and that might differentiate the cases of a Hail Mary rectifying things.

O'BRIEN: And Prof. D'Antonio, would you like to add to that?

D'ANTONIO: Prof. Gillis answered what I was going to say, and that is that the question didn't seem to distinguish between a sin and a crime, and I think the concern we have is most with the crime of pedophilia, or other kinds of sexual abuse, and the crime of the cover-up, which was not mentioned there, and that is the covering up of these events by the church leaders. And that certainly is of great concern to many lay-people today.

O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen. We have to take a quick break in order to pay the rent a little bit. We'd like you to standby. we have a few more e-mails we want to read, and also we'd like to take your phone calls as well. 404-221-1855, call us collect, and we'll try to get your phone calls and e-mails on in just a moment.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: We're joined by three guests, talking about the crisis in the priesthood. Chester Gillis, theology professor at Georgetown, Bill D'Antonio, sociology professor at Catholic University, and David O'Reilly, religion reporter for "The Philadelphia Inquirer."

Gentlemen, we thank you for staying with us.

O'BRIEN: All right, what do we do?

PHILLIPS: Straight to a phone call. Diana, from Florida.

O'BRIEN: All right.

DIANA, CALLER: Yes, good morning. I have a two-part question.

The first part of my question -- this is for Mr. Bill D'Antonio. The first part of my question is, what is the future plan to keep these crimes from happening again? The second part of the question is, how insulting do you feel it is that the Catholic church would anoint gay men to lead the congregations of the Catholic church in the world? How insulting. Gay people should go into other types of jobs. They should not -- either practicing or not practicing -- be any leadership.

O'BRIEN: OK. we've got the idea. Prof. D'Antonio, go ahead.

D'ANTONIO: I think the first part of the question on what's the future -- I know that a growing number of laity, especially in Boston, are hoping that the future will include the laity in the decision making regarding how this problem is to be handled. If you don't include the laity, I think you're simply going to aggravate the problem, and the most disappointing part of this week's activities was Cardinal Law's directive to the laity in Boston, trying to organize parish councils, that this was beyond the pale of the Canon law.

Now, there certainly are some Canon laws, but using the legalism of the Canon law rather than reaching out to them and saying, yes, I want you to work with me, even though there are some laws, I'm sure we can work this out. That's very disappointing.

So, if you say what should happen in the next two months before we get to Dallas, I hope we see real action towards bringing the laity in. And I think people like Cardinal McKerrick (ph) in Washington and Bishop Gregory, who is the president of the Bishop's Council now, both of them have spoken about the importance of including the laity. The second part of the question, you perhaps want someone else to respond to.

O'REILLY: I'll jump in on the question.

O'BRIEN: Yes, David, maybe we should perhaps rephrase that somewhat. It was Bishop Gregory who sort of linked this whole issue to the issue of homosexuality within the priesthood.

Some would say that it really just confuses the whole issue, the issue of sexual abuse and the issue of sexual orientation being entirely separate in many people's minds.

David, what do you think?

O'REILLY: Well, Cardinal Bevilaqua here in Philadelphia has become the real hardliner on this question. The policy here in the Philadelphia archdiocese is already to no longer allow gay men into the seminary, and the cardinal is saying that he thinks that homosexually oriented men are not suitable candidates, even if they've never had any sexual activity whatsoever.

So it's a very hard-line. I'm not sure that all of the cardinals and, again, all the bishops, are in agreement with him on that. I think he's probably the hardest line of all.

And Cardinal McKerrick (ph), at a press conference in Rome, said he wasn't willing to go that far. He thought that a candidate, a man who is able to stay celibate, is a suitable person for the priesthood.

So once again, we are not seeing one mind on this.

O'BRIEN: Prof. Gillis?

GILLIS: Well, Cardinal Bevilaqua also used an odd analogy. He made an analogy between alcoholism and homosexuality, and it seems to me that alcoholism is an disease or an addiction, homosexuality is an orientation, not a disease.

I think they're very different kinds of problems -- not problems, but different kinds of issues completely. And it would be confusion to say that these people have a disease, like alcoholism, if their orientation is homosexual.

The other thing is, how does one know who is homosexual and who's not? It would require self-identification. I'm not sure there's any kind of psychological screening that can absolutely identify that.

So I'm not sure that they would be able to screen out all homosexuals if they wanted to, and I'm not sure that they should. There probably are many homosexuals in our ministry who are quite effective, and probably living their vows fairly.

O'BRIEN: You want to add? We have time for one more e-mail, if you don't mind, I'd like to put this in. This comes from Kate in Travis City, Michigan: "Please don't think that I don't believe that sexual abuse has happened for years within the church, or that those priests should not spend years in jail. I am just worried about what is happening right now, and those that may be wrongly accused, and have no way to prove it in the court of public opinion."

Kate is worried about a witch hunt. Gentlemen, are you?

O'REILLY: Yes, indeed.

As a newspaper reporter, who's been covering this now for six weeks or seven weeks, I have found that outing a priest is really a traumatic undertaking for reporters. It's not easy. There is a great deal of struggle and crisis, and we ask ourselves are we being fair. We don't do it lightly.

And I think that most of the people -- the accusations that are not very credible, we're simply not going to run into print with it.

O'BRIEN: Anybody else on that one?

(CROSSTALK)

D'ANTONIO: What saves us in some way is that people who know their local parish priest and work with that priest for a long time still have high confidence in the local parish priest, and there is something of an abstract problem here, that we're trying to judge what percentage of all priests are guilty of any kind of sexual abuse. And that is, with these headlines, creates a great deal of confusion, which we're not going to resolve easily.

O'BRIEN: All right. Final word from Prof. Gillis, and we do Appreciate it.

GILLIS: I think one of the most egregious cases of a false accusation was against Cardinal Mahoney, that was well publicized when it came out, but it was tantamount to extortion, it seemed to me. And it was unfair, and it was unfounded.

So we have to be very careful about making accusations and not having evidence.

O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen. That's a good place to leave it, and we should all keep that in mind as this story continues to unfold and as we track that meeting coming up in June in Texas.

Thank you all, gentlemen -- Chester Gillis, Bill D'Antonio, David O'Reilly, for being -- and we thank you for your excellent e-mails and phone calls. We appreciate you participating with us, as always.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com