c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday (June 15) to proceed with a second round of audits to measure their own compliance with sexual abuse reforms.

The bishops, meeting at a closed-door retreat in Englewood, Colo., voted 207-14 for the audits, which are scheduled to be completed by the end of the year and released next February. There was one abstention.

The bishops’ conference came under heavy fire from lay reform groups last month after more than 30 bishops urged that the audits be delayed or canceled altogether.

The bishops initially agreed to the audits in June 2002 as part of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” adopted after the sex abuse scandal erupted. The charter calls for an “annual report,” but some bishops said that did not mean intensive audits.

The first round of audits, released in January, found that about 90 percent of dioceses had implemented the reforms.

Some of the bishops whose dioceses were deemed noncompliant, including Cardinal Edward Egan of New York and Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., had led an organized effort to delay future audits.

Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis, chairman of the bishops’ sexual abuse committee, said additional audits are “a clear indication of our commitment to the charter and to the protection of children and young people, which is the purpose for which we adopted it just over two years ago.”

Lay groups, meanwhile, remain skeptical.

“It’s what they promised two years ago,” said Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “It is the very least they can do _ one more year of minimal self-reports based on minimal self-established criteria.”

Illinois Appelate Justice Anne Burke, the outgoing chairman of the bishops’ advisory National Review Board, said she was satisfied, after raising concerns about the moves by some bishops to squash the audits.

“It’s significant they are continuing with their efforts and really do mean what they say when they want to make all the dioceses safe for every child,” she told The Denver Post.

Kathleen McChesney, director of the bishops’ Office of Child and Youth Protection, said the $2 million audits will be conducted by former FBI agents directed by the Boston-based Gavin Group, who oversaw the first round of audits.

McChesney said she was not concerned by attempts to slow the audits. “I never thought we wouldn’t do it,” she told RNS. “I just didn’t know what form it would take.”

The bishops also agreed to proceed with a $4 million study by outside experts on the “causes and contexts” of the sex abuse scandal. The bishops voted 199-21 to seek bids from outside researchers who will examine the roots of the scandal, and recommend measures to keep it from occurring again. That report is not expected for several years.

In other business, the bishops heard an interim report from a task force of bishops who will make suggestions on how to handle Catholic politicians who dissent from church teaching, most notably on abortion.

Members of the task force, headed by Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, spoke to the bishops Tuesday and Wednesday, but are not expected to make their final report until after the November elections.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops, said “it remains to be seen” whether the bishops will issue any statement on the issue from their meeting in Colorado.

The bishops are expected to spend the rest of the week focused on prayer and spiritual reflection. The meeting ends Saturday (June 19). The bishops will reconvene for their annual business meeting in Washington in November.

DEA/PH END ECKSTROM