From NCR:
Individual Catholic bishops across the United States must renounce some of the supreme authority they have over their dioceses to allow for the creation of a new national body to investigate misconduct allegations, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said.
When the U.S. bishops meet in November to consider the continuing clergy sexual abuse crisis, Cupich said the prelates "have to be very clear about an accountability procedure for accusations about bishops."
"Bishops have to, as a group, say, 'We cede our rights as bishops to have somebody else come in and investigate us,' " the cardinal told NCR. "Every bishop has to be willing to say, 'I will allow myself to be investigated by an independent group if there is an accusation against me.' "
It would be a start. But the Bishops should go on to adopt the other reform proposals I offered in my article, Restoring Confidence in the Roman Catholic Church: Corporate Governance Analogies, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3249236
Events of the Summer 2018 brought the long running sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church back onto the front pages, highlighting the role of diocesan bishops in covering up the scandal and enabling abusers. In response to these developments, the Church is again considering reforms to protect victims and punish abusers and enablers. This article proposes that the Church create a system for laity to anonymously report allegations, enact strong protections for whistleblowers, and impose a mandatory whistleblowing requirement on priests. As a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report demonstrates, however, the laity was reporting the abuse to the Church but the hierarchy buried those reports in secret files. The ultimate problem thus is not so much the lack of reporting, as it was the lack of action after the report. Accordingly, the article’s principal proposal is the creation of both diocesan and national disciplinary bodies led by expert lay members as the ultimate authorities in sex abuse cases. The proposal draws an analogy between these bodies and corporate audit committees and argues that a number of aspects of how audit committees function can be usefully adapted to the proposed review bodies.
