Professors advise
church to rebuild trust

Religion scholars say Catholic
leaders must offer restitution
and professional therapy

Isle bishop backs strict priest policy

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By Mary Adamski
madamski@starbulletin.com

Hawaii religion professors have some suggestions for the Catholic Church in the United States: Walk away from the confessional into the future.

The scene at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which concludes its history-making meeting today in Dallas, was reminiscent of the sacrament of penance, in which a Catholic admits to sin, expresses contrition and vows to avoid the same error in the future.

The U.S. bishops are trying to come up with a new national policy for handling molestation claims because of the clerical sex abuse crisis plaguing the church.

"Any real guidelines for the future would have to be those that would help rebuild trust and community," said David Coleman, chairman of the Chaminade University religion department. Communication and openness with church members and the public is key, he said.

"The vast majority of clergy are looking for the same insights: How do we rebuild trust and create safeguards for everyone involved?

"I think it will have the impact of involvement of lay people in the process by which decisions are made. It appears they are realizing that because they tend to keep it secret, we (church members) couldn't know developments and head off repeat offenses."

Historian Willis H.A. Moore said: "I believe the church needs to offer restitution. It needs to say, 'If this happened to you, we will pay for a therapist, a good one. Send us a bill and we'll pay it.'

"I think the issue before the Roman Catholic Church now is healing," said Moore. Besides teaching medieval history in religion at Chaminade -- "which is, in fact, Catholic Church history," said Moore -- he teaches geography, speech and other subjects to state prison inmates earning GED credit.

"There are people wandering around the planet who are deeply hurt folks," Moore said. "I meet guys in prison who were molested by their fathers, beaten regularly. They don't know how to do life, so they have behaved inappropriately and are in the legal system."

Moore, an active layman in the Episcopal Church, said he would give the same advice to his and other churches: "Offer restitution and keep it out of court.

"There is healing possible and it needs qualified therapy. It cannot be, 'Just take this money and go away and not talk about it.' The money isn't going to heal anybody."

University of Hawaii religion lecturer David Panisnick thinks it is a matter of survival that the Catholic Church, with its declining number of priests, has to ordain women. And "they need to be doing something about celibacy -- getting rid of it. Obviously, it is not going to happen in the lifetime of this pope.

"I think pedophilia is just one aspect of a problem," said Panisnick, who teaches "Understanding Christianity" at the University of Hawaii. "I think celibacy is the problem."

Priests' celibacy was not required by the Catholic Church until the middle of 16th century, he said, "and it is certainly counterproductive.

"Celibacy means not marrying. It doesn't mean no sex. The more the church tried to institutionalize it, the response was always increased concubinage," said Panisnick.

"Through history the main objections to celibacy have come from the priesthood. Priests wouldn't tolerate it. Priests are still not tolerating it, but now it is a don't ask, don't tell revolution. I think sex is rampant in the clergy. If people knew the level of homosexual and heterosexual affairs going on ... Of course, from the church view, any sex outside of marriage is forbidden."

Panisnick said he expects the subject to come up in the class he will teach in the second session of summer classes. Its title is "Love, Sex and Religion."

Coleman said the current scandal of priest pedophilia and cover-up was discussed in a spring class he taught on "Leadership Ethics."

"The question came up, What does this mean about leadership in the Catholic Church? We were studying servant leadership models ... which would seem to be different from the circumstances that led to the scandal. Students are interested in where do we see ourselves going as a church," said Coleman, a Catholic.

Panisnick thinks the action taken by American bishops and the publicity over the scandal may open the subject in other countries, where misconduct by clergy is hardly acknowledged.

"I am absolutely convinced this is a huge problem in Europe, too. Why it isn't coming out may be because they don't have the tradition of litigation we do," Panisnick said.

Moore said that to institute a zero-tolerance policy, ejecting any priest who has molested a child, does not fulfill the church's moral obligation to the community or to the offender.

"Molesting children is a very special form of sickness. In prison I deal with guys who are in programs for drug and alcohol abuse. Some fellows are going through programs for sex offenders. I do not believe they can be cured," said Moore.

"There are some people who are just going to molest girls, women, boys, and they have got to be kept away from them."

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