Rensselaer Franciscan offers overview of year

BY KATE BLAIN
ASSISTANT EDITOR

Religious order priests are dealing with the clergy sexual abuse scandal along with their diocesan counterparts.

No one knows that better than Rev. Canice Connors, OFM Conv., minister provincial for the Franciscan friars of the Immaculate Conception province, based at St. Anthony-on-Hudson Friary in Rensselaer.

Father Connors is not only president of the U.S. Conference of Major Superiors of Men, but also past president of St. Luke's Institute in Maryland, a psychiatric treatment center for priests and religious.

Leading diocese

Father Connors sees the Albany Diocese as "a leader" in dealing with abusive priests.

The Albany Diocese is "doing things as well as if not better than any diocese in the U.S.," he said, adding that the diocesan Consultation Center and the Counseling for Laity Office are the best in the country.

He also applauded the Diocese's public pleas for victims to come forward and its help for those who have been abused. "In some ways, they're out in front," he said of such policies.

Differences

When it comes to the abuse crisis, said Father Connors, the major difference between the Franciscans and the Albany Diocese is that his order does not require abusive priests to totally leave religious life. Instead, those who express remorse and receive treatment are allowed to live in one of the order's houses.

Under the Albany Diocese's policy, a diocesan priest or a priest affiliated with a religious order is barred from public ministry permanently if an allegation of sexual abuse against him is substantiated.

In the case of a religious order priest, the Bishop will notify the priest's superior that the offender is no longer permitted to serve in public ministry in the Diocese.

Safeguards

The Franciscans have made an agreement with Presidium, a national organization based at the University of Texas that deals with abuse, to make sure all their safeguards against abuse are adequate.

The Franciscans "don't have a national review board [as the bishops do]; we have this professional organization," Father Connors explained.

He noted that his order has agreed to follow the U.S. bishops' "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," and is particularly working on education about abuse and follow-up for victims.

Impact

On a larger scale, the provincial said that his work with the U.S. Conference of Major Superiors of Men has made him realize how much the crisis is affecting everyone in religious life.

"We [Franciscans] recently had an assembly, and we acknowledged that a lot of the energy we would have put into other projects is invested in this matter," he said. Although the day was generally upbeat, he added, "there's a sense of exhaustion."

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard attended that assembly to talk about breaking ground this summer for an assisted-living facility for senior citizens on the grounds of St. Anthony-on-Hudson. He also spoke on the abuse scandal.

"He spoke about the need in this time to dwell on virtues: joy, trusting God's providence, a spirit of evangelical daring and deepening a life of prayer," Father Connors recalled. "He was well-received."

Zero tolerance

Father Connors agreed with Bishop Hubbard's view -- expressed at the Dallas meeting of U.S. bishops in 2002 that created the national charter on sexual abuse -- that an absolute "zero-tolerance" policy for offending priests eliminates opportunities for rehabilitation and redemption.

This concern notwithstanding, Bishop Hubbard voted in favor of the zero-tolerance policy and was among the first bishops in the country to enact it.

In Dallas, said Father Connors, the country's bishops were "trying to prove to people that we would never make the mistake again of reassigning [priests who had abused children]. The bishops had to say in some radical way that 'we will never, ever do this again.'"

Rehabilitation

In taking that position, Father Connors said, "no advice was sought" from experts on whether offending priests could be rehabilitated.

He believes they can. "I've worked with too many priests, some of them [who are now] 15 years back in ministry and doing great," to believe otherwise, he said.

As head of St. Luke's Institute, he never advised any bishop to put an offending priest back into ministry with children. He did advise that priests who had abused and been treated be allowed to work with the elderly or in prison ministry.

Psychologists

In April, the provincial attended a symposium at the Vatican that assembled an international panel of psychiatric and medical experts -- none of them Catholic -- to look at clergy abuse. The experts told Vatican officials that dismissing all priest-offenders is not the way to solve the problem.

"The experts were saying that zero-tolerance is not really grounded in any research," Father Connors explained. "Men can recover, and it doesn't do society any good to put them back on the streets."

His major regret is that a national study in 1993 by five major institutions that treat abusive priests was never completed. The study included data on 86 percent of offending priests, but the U.S. bishops' conference decided not to finish it.

At the time, he explained, the media fervor over then-Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago being falsely accused of abuse had died down, and the Church didn't want to stir up more publicity by releasing the results of the study. Consequently, Father Connors believes valuable information went unused.

Future

Now underway is a statistical study of clergy sexual abuse in the U.S. Church over the past 50 years. The study was commissioned by the American bishops and is being conducted by researchers from John Jay College in New York City.

In two years, when the Vatican reviews the U.S. norms and charter created to deal with clergy sexual abuse, Father Connors thinks that "it will be a time to review whether all the steps taken were necessary or even proper."

He expects to see changes then. Society, he said, tends to "act in extremes" when first faced with a problem, then learns more about dealing with it and changes its approach.

"If you look back 60 years at alcoholism, society felt that nothing could be done about it," he stated. "Then we learned about treatment. I feel the same thing is going to happen [with abuse] in 20 years. The inclination to abuse young people is something we can do something about."

Good and bad

Father Connors believes the abuse crisis has made religious orders learn to cooperate more "across the boundaries of communities" than ever before. "We can't stand apart," he said. "That's been a very positive outcome."

He also charged that some of the secular media in the Capital District have been biased against the Church in their coverage of the clergy abuse crisis.

"I think [the Times Union has] done an awful job" of covering abuse stories, he stated. "It's so one-sided."

(6/19/03) [[In-content Ad]]