This week, all of America's Catholic prelates are invited to the
annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Almost all of
them will certainly show up.
But because of their recent recklessness with children's safety, some
don't deserve to be there.
They should have the decency to stay home.
More importantly, leaders of the conference should have the courage to
disinvite them.
Let's start with the first and most obvious bishop who should be
forbidden to attend: Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, Mo., who was
found guilty of criminally endangering kids in September.
For at least
five months, Finn kept hidden from police hundreds of pornographic,
suggestive and inappropriate photos of young girls taken by Fr. Shawn
Ratigan.
Besides breaking Missouri's mandated reporter law, Finn clearly
violated both the letter and the spirit of USCCB's Charter for the
Protection of Children and Young People.
Yet so far, not one of Finn's roughly 200 peers has even seen fit to
criticize him. Our secular justice system has punished his wrongdoing.
The full Catholic church hierarchy has ignored his wrongdoing.
But Finn is not the only member of the bishops' conference who should be disinvited.
Consider Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who just last month
suspended Fr. Rolando Garcia from active parish ministry after the
fourth -- yes, fourth -- civil lawsuit was filed charging Garcia with
child sex crimes.
(Whatever became of the bishops' allegedly binding
"one strike and you're out" abuse policy?)
Adding insult to injury, two
of those suits, dating back to 2007, had been settled by Miami church
officials.
Then there's Bishop R. Daniel Conlon of Joliet, Ill.
In 2010, his
predecessor suspended Fr. Lee Ryan because of credible child sex abuse
allegations.
But in September, Conlon abruptly and inexplicably
announced he was putting Ryan back on the job. Thankfully, public
pressure forced a reversal of that callous and irresponsible decision.
Adding insult to injury, Conlon heads the USCCB's Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People.
Conlon's ill-fated move should merit some discipline from his brother bishops, starting with his banning from this meeting.
Next, consider West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield, also accused
of molestation. He should be disinvited from this week's meeting.
In April, Bransfield was accused of abuse by a man who testified
about another child-molesting cleric. During that same trial, another
man, also under oath, said Bransfield had a lewd conversation with him.
And the prosecutor in the case disclosed that Bransfield had been
accused, in a separate instance, of fondling a child years earlier.
Despite a pending criminal investigation into these allegations, Bransfield refuses to step aside during the probe.
In light of this, Bransfield should be told to stay home this week.
There are two reasons why being ousted from the bishops' meeting is the appropriate response to these four wrongdoers.
First, banning these bishops is the clearest and easiest penalty the
USCCB can levy. Only prosecutors can file criminal charges. Only the
Vatican can demote, discipline or defrock a corrupt prelate.
But the USCCB is essentially a trade organization. Like any
organization, it can set its own rules for membership. And it needs no
approval from Vatican bureaucrats -- or anyone -- to say, "This man has
put kids in harm's way. He can't come to our meeting."
Second, banning these bishops is precisely the kind of action the
USCCB pledged a decade ago. Ten years ago this month, all US bishops
made a formal "fraternal correction" policy, committing themselves to
"apply the requirements of the Charter to ourselves."
In other words,
prelates promised they would deal effectively with not only clerics
accused of child molestation, but also with complicit colleagues who act
improperly in child sex abuse and cover-up cases.
Sadly, however, since making that pledge, bishops have completely ignored it.
Now, however, with these clear, egregious and recent misdeeds by
Finn, Wenski, Conlon and others, it's time for bishops to stand up to
bishops to continue, even now, to protect predators, endanger kids and
break the child safety laws of the church or of our society.