When Nicholas P. Cafardi was named to the National Review Board that the U.S. Catholic bishops formed at their landmark June 2002 meeting in Dallas to stem the crisis of American priests' sexual abuse of children, he brought a unique perspective.The bishops established the all-lay board to monitor their compliance with unprecedented national church policies they had just approved to protect children from sexual abuse by priests, to respond pastorally to those abused by church personnel and to remove any abusive priest from ministry.
The board also was mandated to commission and oversee groundbreaking studies on the nature and extent of Catholic clergy sexual abuse of children in the United States since 1950 and on the causes and context of that abuse.
Several other original members of the review board had civil law backgrounds, but Cafardi, a law professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, was the only member with professional degrees in church law as well as civil law.
In "Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops' Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children," he draws on that background and his review-board experiences to explore in depth how church law and institutional practice before the Dallas meeting contributed to a context --- especially in the 1970s and 1980s --- in which abusive priests were treated with extraordinary gentility and mercy while the pain and suffering of their victims was largely ignored.
"Before Dallas" is not primarily about the abusive priests or their victims. It is about the failure of U.S. Catholic bishops, of their advisers (civil and ecclesiastical) and of Catholic institutional protections that should have and could have prevented the debacle.
"There has not been an era in the church's long history when it was not aware of the evil of the sexual abuse of children, especially by its clergy," Cafardi writes. He says this awareness goes back to Matthew's Gospel, where "Jesus condemns those who would lead a child astray, adding an unusually violent warning that their punishment will be worse than death by forced drowning."
So, how did the molestation of children by priests in the latter half of the 20th century become so widespread that it sparked the U.S. church's worst crisis in history?
"Before Dallas" carefully dissects the factors in church law and pastoral practice that led bishops and their advisers to favor a psychological model of treating abusive priests rather than dismissing them from the priesthood.
He notes that just as the bishops began to recognize the issue as a national problem in the mid-1980s, one of their most effective practical tools for dealing with it under church law was removed.
"Under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, when a diocesan bishop was aware that a priest had sexually abused a minor, he had the ability to suspend that priest 'ex informata conscientia'" --- out of an informed conscience, without undertaking a formal penal process, Cafardi writes. When the new Code of Canon Law was issued in 1983, that option was no longer available, and the penal process for removing a priest was (and remains) difficult and cumbersome.
In his final chapter Cafardi argues persuasively for two changes in church law: One would add "sexual contact by an adult with a person below the age of 18" to Canon 1041's current list of impediments to ordination. The other would add similar language to Canon 1044, which lists acts that make an already ordained person "irregular for the exercise of orders received."
Quoting Pope John Paul II's famous 2002 statement, "People need to know that there is no place in the priesthood for those who would harm the young," Cafardi argues that those words must be more than mere rhetoric. "They must become a part of the church's legal system," he says.
"Before Dallas" is a scholarly work --- the last 100 pages are devoted to endnotes, an appendix and a bibliography --- but it is highly readable. It offers fascinating insights into the complexity of the church's legal system and into the ecclesiastical culture of recent decades in which too many bishops set their priorities on healing wounded priests and avoiding public scandal instead of protecting children.
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