It would be "blatantly unfair and unrealistic" to hold the Catholic Church's actions in the mid-20th century to the same standards that exist today, says the head of a national bishops' conference. Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber spoke one-on-one with the Standard-Freeholder Tuesday about the Cornwall Public Inquiry -in particular, how the church has evolved in the years since some of the sexual abuse claims made public at the long-running inquiry allegedly occurred.
Weisgerber is the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, meeting this week in Cornwall.
What follows is his brief conversation with the Standard- Freeholder. Some of the remarks have been edited for length.
How closely has the Catholic Church been paying attention to the Cornwall Public Inquiry?
The inquiry is clearly very important.
But in some senses it's limited to Ontario. Just very occasionally it gets to the national media, where the rest of us would be able to read it.
But I'm in touch constantly with (Alexandria-Cornwall Bishop Paul-Andre) Durocher to find out what is happening, what his perspectives are. At this point, I really don't have any conclusions, any awareness of what's going to come out of it at all.
We learned that, in one case, a priest was hired after being convicted for sexual assault in the U. S. Could that happen today?
It certainly shouldn't. We have all the regulations, procedures in place that it shouldn't.
I don't know any bishop that would knowingly hire somebody in a situation like that, for any institution within the church.
What about a monetary settlement for somebody who's alleged sexual abuse against a priest? That came up in 1993.
That's the difficulty we're faced with very often -when there is an accusation, the temptation is to settle.
Because a full-blown court case can be astronomical in terms of cost. But then you're left in limbo, you don't know who's right and who hasn't been right.
I would think there, you're talking about an individual situation where a priest would have to use their own personal judgment.
Can you expand on some of the regulations or procedures you now have in place?
We have protocols the conference of bishops has given to all of the dioceses as 'templates.'
And the dioceses are asked,
then, to put them into place. It's very clear - when someone is accused or there is an accusation, there's a bishop's delegate who very quickly has to determine whether it's frivolous, or if there's a real substance here.
If there is substance, there's a sexual abuse committee (and if it's) a serious allegation, the person is taken out of ministry. Always, of course, if this involves children, then we have to follow the guidelines of the state.
Do you worry that people paying attention to the inquiry might lose faith in the Catholic church?
We're dealing with cases that happened long ago.
I have a friend who got a master's degree in social work at the end of the 70s. Sexual abuse was never mentioned (then).
Now, it doesn't mean that it didn't happen, but it was never acknowledged. It was never dealt with publicly. Every institution dealt with it more or less in the same way -the person was accused, you brought them in, you gave them a lecture, tried to scare them, and hoped that it would not happen again.
Now, of course . . . that simply isn't the way we work. So often, what is happening is that we're dealing with cases over 40, 50 years ago, and expecting they should measure up to the regulations and to the values of the system we have today.
But I don't know if people always understand the church has changed.
Of course. That's always the concern. It's not just in the church - we are trying to hold people up, 50 or 60 years ago, to the standard that we have today.
And that's blatantly unfair and unrealistic, but I mean, that's what happens. And that creates problems, no question.
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(Source: SF-Canada)