New Report Clouds Bishops' Conference

D A L L A S, June 12, 2002 -- U.S. Catholic bishops will receive an unwelcome surprise as they gather here for a two-day meeting on sex-abuse allegations — a newspaper study that exposes a deeper problem than expected.

Two-third of bishops who run the 178 mainstream Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States have engaged in some sort of concealment or transfer of priests with histories of sexual abuse, according to the Dallas Morning News.

In a story published today — one day before the start of the bishops' conference — the Morning News looked at a range of situations: a bishop ignoring warning signs or accusations, transferring or continuing to employ in the same job a priest who admitted having a problem.

"In Tucson, the bishop has been facing in recent years several lawsuits and has actually had cases where priests have admitted to him abusing boys and he's kept them on," Pam Maples, projects editor for the Morning News, told ABCNEWS.

Public Opinion of the Church Dropping

The newspaper found that Tucson's Bishop Manuel Moreno has been battling nearly a dozen lawsuits claiming he did not act on serious accusations that at least four priests had abused minors.

"When you read what's happening in Tucson in the files, it very much echoes the kinds of things you've been reading out of Boston," Maples said.

The report came as Auxiliary Bishop James F. McCarthy of the Archdiocese of New York resigned after admitting to severalaffairs with women. McCarthy, a pastor of St. ElizabethAnn Seton Church in Westchester County, announced his resignation hours after the Vatican accepted the resignation of Bishop J. Kendrick Williams, 65, ofLexington, Ky., who was accused in three sex abuse cases.

McCarthy is the fourth U.S. bishop to resign since the current sex scandal broke out.

Hoping for a Consensus on Handling Allegations

Boston is the epicenter for the sex-abuse scandal confronting the church. Although abuse allegations have been with the church for years, it was the disclosure earlier this year that Boston church officials moved serial pedophile John Geoghan from parish to parish that led to the widespread national attention.

The conference in Dallas begins Thursday and bishops hope to have a national policy in place by Friday night to reform how the church handles abuse allegations. One idea to be discussed is a zero-tolerance policy for abusers.

Journalists will be covering the conference in massive numbers. U.S. Catholic officials cut off press credentials after granting them to 750 reporters.

Catholic leaders in the United States acknowledge they have problems and say they are determined to mend the church.

"What we need to do is admit mistakes, then to rectify the course of action that we've taken in the past so that it will not happen again in the future," said Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Flynn is in charge of the U.S. bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse.

In an interview with Nightline's Ted Koppel, Flynn said he expected the charter being approved in Dallas this week would help make the church's policy clear. "And we need to act more responsbily in the future," Flynn said.

Flawed Church Management

For years, U.S. bishops had been saying that sex abuse of minors by Catholic clergy was rare — the sinful failings of a tiny percentage.

The percentage of American priests involved still may be relatively small. No one has come forth yet with convincing statistics for what percentage of the nation's 46,000 Catholic clergymen have been involved in sex abuse.

But the Morning News concentrated on how the church reacted. The Dallas journalists' work seems to point to something that is not a matter of simply a few inevitable abusers to be found in any adult population. Rather, it seems to point to a systemic problem of some kind in the structures or management of the American Catholic Church.

Among the other cases noted by the Morning News:

Oklahoma City: Archbishop Eusebius Beltran was given a warning that one of his priests from a rural parish had been sued in another state and that he has been treated for a sexual disorder. Beltran allowed the priest to remain on the job where five years later, in 1999, he was arrested on charges of sexually abusing boys.

Bismarck, N.D.: A lawyer for Bishop Paul Zipfel issued a statement acknowledging that the bishop kept priests on board after receiving credible evidence of sexual abuse of minors.

Omaha, Neb.: Archbishop Elden Curtiss is accused of protecting several priests, one of them recently convicted of manufacturing child pornography and abusing an altar boy.

The Morning News began working on its story three months ago after editors and reporters discovered that no one in the church would — or could — tell them how widespread the sex-abuse problems were. The paper's journalists started phoning dioceses — as well as local journalists, prosecutors and police — all over the country to find out for themselves.

Challenging the ‘Good Old Boys System’

The newspaper's conclusion came as no surprise to some of those who have accused Catholic clergy of abuse.

"It's just the hierarchy of the church, the good old boys system," Wade Schlossstein told ABCNEWS.

Schlossstein was abused as a boy in one of the church's most infamous cases, that against Father Rudolph Kos in Dallas. In 1997, a jury awarded 11 of Kos' victims $120 million. The bishop was warned about his behavior but kept moving Kos around.

"It is just an old staunchy organization that has been surrounded by secrecy. They have been sworn to secrecy and they are just sticking to it," Schlossstein said.

Sylvia Demerest, who was a plaintiff's attorney in the case against Kos, said the culture within the church is designed to prevent scandal. Plus, she said the church has been able to operate autonomously in much of the United States.

But are the charges against the church just Catholic bashing? "It would be Catholic bashing if the facts weren't so clear," Demerest said. "The facts are that the church has condoned and concealed the sexual abuse of children not for a few years."

Many U.S. critics of the church are now charging that there's something about the underlying structure and rules of the Catholic priesthood that makes the sexual abuse — especially of boys — more likely.

"This is a power structure of unmarried males that is honeycombed with secrecy about sexual behavior patterns of priests," said Jason Berry, an ABCNEWS consultant.

Archbishop Flynn has heard about cover-ups and secrecy many times before. But Flynn said often, bishops took the actions they did after consultations with mental health professionals and treatment centers.

"But at the same time, we must be in a position to assure our Catholic people that young people and children will be protected," Flynn said.