US bishops table key votes on response to scandal, at Vatican’s request

November 12, 2018

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will not vote this week on two highly-anticipated proposals to respond to the sex-abuse crisis, after a last-minute Vatican intervention.

As the American bishops gathered for their November meeting in Baltimore, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the USCCB president, announced a stunning change in the agenda for the three-day meeting. Because of a directive from Rome, he said, the bishops would not vote on one proposal to institute a code of conduct for bishops, and another to organize an independent investigation, under lay leadership, into the bishops’ response to the abuse scandal. Those two proposals were easily the most visible items on the USCCB agenda, and had drawn enormous media coverage for the bishops’ meeting.

In announcing the agenda change, Cardinal DiNardo made it clear that the items were being tabled at the request of the Holy See, and that he was disappointed with the move. “At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items,” he said. He also indicated that he had only been made aware of the Vatican’s decision on Sunday night, November 11, just hours before the USCCB opened its plenary meeting. Archbishop Christopher Pierre, the apostolic nuncio in Washington, had met with Pope Francis earlier on Sunday.

Cardinal DiNardo said that the Vatican had explained the intervention by saying that the American bishops’ response to the crisis should be informed by the results of a February conference in Rome on the sex-abuse scandal. The Pope has summoned the leaders of all the world’s episcopal conference to that meeting.

In his own address to the USCCB meeting, Archbishop Pierre also hinted that the Vatican may have reservations about the American bishops’ plan for a lay-led investigation. “Assistance is both welcome and necessary, and surely collaboration with the laity is essential,” the papal representative said. “However, the responsibility as bishops of this Catholic Church is ours.”

The sudden change in the meeting’s agenda left many American bishops visibly dismayed. The USCCB leadership has pushed for a stronger Vatican response to the abuse scandal. In September, Cardinal DiNardo led an American delegation to meet with Pope Francis, asking for an apostolic visitation into the case of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The American bishops were disappointed when Pope Francis declined to authorize such an investigation, which could have produced definitive answers to the troubling questions raised by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.

Pope Francis, for his part, has appeared uneasy with the public responses of the American hierarchy, and had suggested that this week’s USCCB meeting be postponed.

 

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Further information:

• Vatican cancels US bishops’ vote on sex abuse reform measures (CNA)