Recommendations Will Help but
Catholic Governance Structures Must Change

Group Praises Call for Greater Examination of Mandatory Celibacy

“The scope of clerical sexual abuse and coverup in the United States is worse than we imagined. Decades of pain and suffering endured by Catholic victims of clergy sex abuse call us to repent and to reform.” said FutureChurch executive director, Sr. Christine Schenk.

Schenk commended the National Lay Review Board and John Jay investigators for an extraordinarily honest, thorough and exhaustive investigation and for affirming the thousands of innocent priests who have also suffered greatly in the past two years.

She also commended the Lay Review Board Report for naming lack of episcopal accountability as a cause of the current crisis, recommending greater use of “fraternal correction,” increased lay consultation in the selection of pastoral bishops and calling for more in depth study of mandatory celibacy.

FutureChurch, in partnership with Call to Action is currently conducting a Corpus Christi Campaign. In November the campaign delivered 7000 letters to Bishop Wilton Gregory requesting him to open discussion about optional celibacy.

Currently lay leaders in 53 dioceses are surveying priests about optional celibacy. The campaign also educates about the deepening priest shortage and promotes prayer and education programs on the June 13 feast of Corpus Christi.

Hopefully tens of thousands of petitions will be sent to the International Synod on the Eucharist to be held in late 2004.

“ A priesthood with both married and celibate members, might allow us to make better decisions since some of our leaders would be parents and therefore more representative of the Catholic community,” Schenk said.

“Unfortunately there is no mechanism in our Church for sanctioning bishops who knowingly transferred pedophile priests. Thus there is no real guarantee that clerical abuse and cover ups will not occur again if underlying problems in Roman Catholic Church governance are not addressed.”

“We need a system of checks and balances in the Church which allows diverse perspectives to be heard and provides due process for redress of grievances such as malfeasance in office.”

“If episcopal power is to be exercised appropriately, it must be balanced by power exercised in the community of believers. Catholicism will not be set right until an appropriate balance is built into Church governance structures,” she concluded.

FutureChurch, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, is a U.S. coalition of 5,000 parish-based Catholics striving to educate fellow Catholics about the seriousness of the priest shortage, the centrality of the Eucharist (the Mass), and the systemic inequality of women in the Catholic Church. FutureChurch makes presentations throughout the country, distributes educational and informational packets and encourages for widespread discussion about opening ordination to all baptized persons who are called to priestly ministry by God and the people of God. Founded in 1990 FutureChurch incorporated in 1994 after 28 parishes in the Cleveland diocese supported a resolution asking U.S. Bishops to open ordination rather than lose the Mass as the center of Catholic worship.