ATLANTA -- Catholic priests, demoralized by the past two years of the clergy sex abuse scandal, asked a leading archbishop to convey their concerns about priests' rights to the church hierarchy.
Some 240 priests who gathered here for the annual National Federation of Priests' Councils convention grilled Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee on celibacy, false abuse accusations and priestly life.
One priest argued for due process and the rights of priests accused of sexual abuse. Another told Dolan, head of the bishops' Priestly Life and Ministry Committee, that bishops act like "deer in the headlights" whenever priests dare to question them.
Vacations, said another, are practically out of the question in the current priest shortage; in his diocese, each priest covers three or four churches at once. And another pressed for an official church dialogue on celibacy and the notion of married priests.
The April 21 afternoon session marked an emotional high point during the group's four-day convention, during which delegates and leaders called for a serious restructuring of the priest-bishop relationship and a creative rethinking of the role of the priest in a church devastated by scandal.
"The area of due process will get a lot of attention," Dolan responded. "It's dawning on us this is far from a precise science. The last two years have been trial and error, and now we're seeing glitches that we need to rectify."
As head of the Priestly Life and Ministry Committee, Dolan is the bishops' point-man on all issues affecting the priesthood. Leaders here hope Dolan will raise their concerns to the committee at the bishops' meetings in June and November.
"There's been a lot of anger on the part of priests," said the Rev. Robert Silva, president of the Chicago-based group, which represents about half of the country's 47,000 priests. "(They) felt they had been abandoned by the bishops, and still do, to a certain extent."
But now, he says, "I think there's a real openness to dialogue."
Since June 2002, when bishops drafted stringent new rules in response to the sexual abuse crisis, accused priests have faced a lack of due process and a perilous one-strike-you're-out policy, Silva said.
Silva, who is a consultant to Dolan's committee, says he hopes the bishops will re-examine the new policies on sexual abuse with an equal eye toward the needs and rights of both priests and victims.
Silva and other church leaders also hope the bishops will take up the issue of celibacy as a possible way to broaden the pool of candidates for priesthood.
"The shortage of priests is making it necessary to begin to look at alternatives," he says.
