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CNN Saturday Morning News

New Policy Would Not Defrock Accused Priests

Aired June 15, 2002 - 12:27   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: Just yesterday the U.S. Bishops had voted on a new policy and in it is a plan that would ban priest who sexually abused a minor from ministerial duties. However, those ministers or those priest will still be able to hold on to the title of priest. The Vatican still has to approve the bishops' policy. What is likely to be the Pope's response? John Allen, a correspondent for the "National Catholic Reporter" publication, may have some inside information. He joins us now from Rome.

All right, well, it's not the zero tolerance policy that many of the victims had hoped for, instead, it is sort of a policy that perhaps may please both sides. How is the Vatican likely to respond to it?

JOHN ALLEN, NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER: Well, Fredricka, the Vatican formally is not going to say anything quickly. What's going to happen is the bishops will submit this document, it will be under consideration by several Vatican offices. And you probably won't hear anything formally for several months.

Informally we know the Vatican has had some reservations about the approach that has taken shape among the U.S. bishops. And if what the bishops came up with didn't satisfy some if the victims because it didn't go far enough. It may have rubbed some people in the Vatican the wrong way because it went to far in their point of view. If you want a good summary on what the Vatican objections have been...

WHITFIELD: How did it go to far? How are your sources saying that their belief would be going too far?

ALLEN: If you want a summary of that, I think what Cardinal Avery Dulles said on the floor during the debate in Dallas yesterday was a good summary of what I hear from Vatican officials and I think there were three points there.

The first is that the so-called zero tolerance thing and the scope of it, I think the definition of sexual abuse in this document is sufficiently broad that some people in the Vatican and some people in leadership positions think it may be too broad. You're talking not just about physical contact but the so-called interactions and it's hard to know exactly what that means.

The second point would be the turning over of every allegation immediately to the police as soon as it comes along. I think there are some in the Vatican who think hat would compromise the relationship of trust that the bishop ought to have with his priest.

And third, there's a question of how much information do you turn over to the police or to lawyers in civil processes. I think some of the Vatican think the church ought to be able to keep a zone of confidentiality for some of its records which is not apparently what's envisioned in the bishops' document.

So on at least those three points we know there have been differences between the Vatican and the U.S. bishops. And I think the U.S. bishops have a sales job to do now in bringing this document over here.

WHITFIELD: Now, many victims and victims' rights activist are saying that it doesn't go far because it doesn't even address the issue of: What about the bishops who are accused of covering up? How would they be treated under this umbrella policy?

ALLEN: Yes, well, the truth is that the question of the accountability of bishops is one of the great missing pieces of that policy. And as I understand it, the U.S. Bishops decided not to address that in this document because under church law, it's the Vatican, the Holy Father, the pope himself who is supposed to hold the bishops accountable.

So I think a lot of Americans are going to be looking now, and in fact, the U.S. bishops said on that point the ball is in the Vatican's court. I think a lot of American Catholics will be looking to see what the Vatican does with that.

WHITFIELD: OK, amazingly we can still kind of hear you, the bells haven't drowned you out completely. We can hear you just barely though. Now you said it would take months yet before the Vatican would actually pour over this policy and vote or make a decision as to whether they actually approve of it.

So that means we're not going to see that this policy is actually inactive for quite some time?

ALLEN: Well, actually, as I understand it, what the bishops vowed to do last night is they vowed to go home and implement this thing immediately. They don't need Vatican permission to implement it. What they want a Vatican blessing for is to make a law, that is make it binding on everyone. Because the status of things now is that each individual bishop can decide for himself which pieces of this policy he wants to implement.

Now my understanding is the overwhelming majority of them are committed to going home and implementing it hook line and sinker. But what they want, of course, is for the Vatican to back it up with its (UNINTELLIGIBLE) authority so that it has some teeth. And that's the piece of the puzzle we don't have yet.

And it is entirely possible that the Vatican, when the document gets to them it is going to ask for some changes. It's going to want to tweak it along some of those lines I talked about. So the thing to remember is that Dallas is not the end of this story. It is one frame in a moving picture whose end we don't yet know.

WHITFIELD: Just one stepping-stone. All right thank you very much John Allen correspondent for the "National Catholic Reporter." Thanks for joining us from Rome.

Now we want to get more reaction from the bishops vote. Katherine Freberg is an attorney who represents some of the plaintiffs in the sexual abuse cases against the Catholic Church and she joins us now from Dallas.

So the bishops want to implement or find according to John that they can implement this policy but it is not going to be law until the Vatican would make it so. This doesn't go far enough according to an awful lot of victims and victims' rights advocates. Is that the case in your view?

KATHERINE FREBERG, ABUSE VICTIM'S ATTORNEY: That is the case. You know, there is two problems here. One is how to deal with the priest who molests and number two, how to deal with the cardinals and the bishops who covered up for the priests who molest.

Now this charter that they have proposed does not deal with the second issue at all. It is a charter of zero accountability. And as to the first issue, there certainly is progress, but there are so many loopholes to allow priests to continue on as priests, there is a huge loophole in this charter and it needs to be addressed.

WHITFIELD: So parishioners and activists don't really have any recourse though do they? I mean people were really looking toward the bishops for bringing about some policy that would be sensitive to the issues that have been addressed quite graphically especially during the conference.

FREBERG: Yes. I think that the victims do have recourse and I know that because of my own personal experience. Victims and civil litigation attorneys have the power and the control to force the defrocking of priests. If they file a lawsuit, which we have done in the past, you can insist upon the defrocking of the priest as part of any settlement.

The other thing that a victim can do is to actually hire a canon lawyer to institute a conaticle (ph) trial to have the priest defrocked. So the victims, it looks like, the victims are going to be the ones that are going to have to force this issue if the bishops are unwilling to do so.

WHITFIELD: But the pope has already made it clear he's not interested in that because it is way too time consuming and they really don't have the resources nor the interest to do so.

FREBERG: Well, if it is part of a settlement, a priest agrees to be defrocked it's a very simple process and the Pope has signed papal decrees defrocking the priests that we have sued. So I do think it can be done.

WHITFIELD: At this point, how in any way does this sort of galvanize the legal efforts, does this sort of underscore the need that, you know, many victims -- and victims want to take the legal route in which to get what it is that they're looking for, some sort of settlement or some sort of attention out of their cases.

FREBERG: It will galvanize the victims because I think the victims and the parishioners will see that the bishops still are not going to do the right thing here. And it is going to galvanize them to work with their state legislatures to change laws to make the state laws more victim-friendly; changing the statute of limitations, changing the laws that allow victims to sue the church for the molestations that these priests commit.

So the victims are going to gain strength for what the bishops and the cardinals failed to do today.

WHITFIELD: If right now this new policy is all that the Catholic Church really has. How much confidence do you have that the Catholic Church is going to enforce this policy and how would it go about enforcing this policy?

FREBERG: Well, that is a very good question because in litigating these cases, I have found that the bishops and cardinals play games with the words that they use under their policies. For example, I had a case that I filed in 1997 where a priest was sent under allegations, multiple allegations by multiple victims, sent to a psychiatric institute for an evaluation. The evaluation came back that he was a bad guy.

The bishop testified in our case that this priest was not removed because he had been found to be a molester, but because he was -- he had refused to undergo treatment. And so under this policy of, you know, finding a priest who -- to have molested, these are the kind of games that the bishops may play by saying that they haven't truly been found to have molested.

So I think it is going to be up to the victims, up to the civil litigators and now the district attorney's office to keep the bishops and the cardinals feet to the fire to make sure they do implement this policy for what its spirit was to be.

WHITFIELD: All right, Katherine Freberg, thank you very much for joining us from Dallas.

FREBERG: Thank you.

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