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Cardinals back off VATICAN CITY >> American cardinals headed home today from their summit at the Vatican, carrying plans for new policies to remove priests involved in sexual abuse -- but facing a tough sell from some U.S. Catholics seeking a stricter stance of zero tolerance.
toughest stance
A Honolulu diocese spokesman
calls the proposals 'a good step'Staff and news reports
During the extraordinary two-day meeting, U.S. Catholic leaders navigated through sometimes contradictory guidelines set by Pope John Paul II in their bid to stem the sex abuse scandal rocking the U.S. church.
John Paul insisted there was no place in the priesthood for those who would endanger children. But at the same time, he expressed reservations about giving bishops too much authority to remove priests, fearing it would be misused and recalling his own life under communist rule in Poland. The pope also reminded the Americans about the possibility of repentance.
In the end, the cardinals stopped short of a "one strike, you're out" policy. They said yesterday they would recommend a process to defrock any priest who has become "notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors." Cases that are "not notorious" would be left to the local bishop to decide.
The cardinals will take their recommendations to a June meeting of U.S. bishops in Dallas to draw up a nationwide policy.
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, accused of moving abusive priests from one parish to another, said as he left Rome today that he was "particularly was grateful for the Holy Father's talk. I think it was excellent. Very good spirit. Very frank, very open."
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The 12 American cardinals and several top bishops attending said they did not discuss whether Law should resign.Honolulu diocese spokesman Patrick Downes called the proposals out of Rome "a good step ... toward resolving this scandal in the church."
Saying he would have liked to see the proposals "go a little further," Downes added that the June meeting may produce something stronger.
Even though the scandal has centered on the mainland, the action in Rome helps somewhat to restore the reputation of the Catholic Church in Hawaii, he said.
"There's been some disappointment and hurt in general here on the part of priests and laity because they've got to feel the sadness and the disappointment seeing ... the sins of the Catholic Church being exposed like this," Downes said.. "This is a step but healing won't take place overnight."
Battles could lie ahead when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meets to work out the many details left out of the cardinals' recommendations -- including what sort of abuse meets the standard to merit removal and whether civil authorities should be involved.
The cardinals' final statement invoked the pope's comments that sexual abuse of minors is "rightly considered a crime by society" -- but made no specific proposal about reporting it to authorities. Several cardinals had wanted stronger language.
The reference to removing priests involved in "serial" attacks contradicted a statement during the conference by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, who had said the American cardinals reached consensus on dismissing any priest involved in a future sex abuse case.
Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, said many American Catholics would not be satisfied by the summit's outcome. He called it "confounding" that a priest would be removed from a ministry only after being deemed a serial offender.
"That leaves an uncomfortable uncertainty about offenders who are not yet serial, but who clearly have the potential to become notorious," Appleby said.
Roderick MacLeish, lawyer for some 180 alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests, denounced the meetings' conclusions.
"We cannot create a better and safer church for children without a thorough examination of the systemic causes of pedophilia within this institution," he said.
Still, Thomas J. Reese, editor of the weekly Catholic magazine America and a renowned Vatican expert, said there did appear to be a consensus for the outlines drawn by the cardinals.
"Where there is disagreement is over what to do with a priest who was involved in nonserial abuse 20 or 30 years ago and has been clean ever since," Reese said in a statement.
At the press conference ending the gathering, the head of the U.S. bishops conference, Wilton Gregory, the bishop of Belleville, Ill., said church leaders were increasingly convinced that abusive priests should not be moved to new posts.
"There is a growing consensus, certainly among the faithful, among the bishops, that it is too great a risk to assign a priest who has abused a child to another ministry," Gregory said.
The cardinals also reaffirmed celibacy for priests -- a policy some reformers in the United States said played a role in the abuse. The church leaders declared that "a link between celibacy and pedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained."
They also drew a distinction on the age of those who suffered sexual abuse, saying "attention was drawn to the fact that almost all cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true pedophilia."
McCarrick of Washington outlined a process in which an accused priest would be put on what he compared to "administrative leave" and removed from clerical duties while the case was investigated.
Speaking to CNN, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said the new process would allow bishops for the first time to attempt to remove a priest against the priest's will. But he said the pope was reluctant to give bishops too much power.
John Paul "lived, as he told us again and again, in a communist state where administrative law was misused against human rights," George said.
Even with the proposed new special process, "there are going to be a lot of provisions in there for appeal and certitude that the rights of all parties are protected," he said.
The Vatican meeting was called in an effort to resolve a scandal that has rocked the American church since January, leading to the resignation of one bishop and calls for another to resign, and costing the church millions of dollars in legal settlements.
Recent scandals also have hit the church in Austria, Ireland, France, Australia and the pope's native Poland.
The Associated Press and Star-Bulletin reporter
Lisa Asato contributed to this report.