Contact: Suzanne Morse 617-680-2131, smorse@votf.org

For Immediate Release

June 15, 2005

Most Reverend William S. Skylstad,
President, U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
Diocese of Spokane
P.O. Box 1453
Spokane, WA 99210

Dear Bishop Skylstad:

I am writing on behalf of Voice of the Faithful to express our organization's continued concern about the secretive and inaccessible process for review of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

It was in this month, three years ago, that the landmark Charter and Norms were created to protect children in Catholic parishes across the country, and to hold accountable those responsible for the creation of the clergy sexual abuse crisis that has so damaged the Catholic Church. The 2002 conference in Dallas marks the only time that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has heard directly from the survivors of clergy sexual abuse. The Charter that passed at that extraordinary event represented the highest hope our Church has had in repairing a wounded community.

Thus, we have felt grave disappointment in the process for review of the Charter, which to date has not been transparent or inclusive of survivor and lay input. We are aware that the Bishops will be concluding the review process soon, culminating in a vote by the Bishops to accept the revised Charter. And yet, neither the survivor community nor lay Catholics as a whole have a detailed understanding of the content of the revised Charter, and how it differs from the Charter as currently written. Additionally, we have not been made aware of the process that the Bishops will use to approve the revisions. For instance, will Bishops vote on the document as a whole or on each individual revision?

A few months ago, Voice of the Faithful sent a letter, along with a fully annotated copy of the Workbook, to Archbishop Harry Flynn, the chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse. In our letter to Archbishop Flynn, we expressed our strong concerns regarding the weakening of the Charter, particularly in these areas: the change to self-reporting, which is not the same as an independent audit; weakened, interpretative language within the Charter, especially as it relates to the Bishops' obligation to protect children; and the characterization of the clergy sexual abuse crisis as a part of the past. In addition, we made important recommendations to strengthen the Charter, including recommending the active input of the survivor community, the specific referencing of the Bishops' conduct in the creation of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, the publication of the names of the members of the diocesan review boards, and the full funding of both the USCCB's Office of Child and Youth Protection and the proposed Causes and Context study of the clergy sexual abuse crisis. Voice of the Faithful stands behind those concerns and recommendations. Having received no substantive response from Archbishop Flynn, or the USCCB staff, we are left uncertain whether those factors have ever been considered by the bishops of the United States. The letter we sent to Archbishop Flynn is attached and also available on our Web site.

We have entered a new season within the Catholic Church, a historic period that calls for healing and a restoration of trust that can only be brought about with the help of all Catholics working together if the Church in the United States is to recover and to grow again. The Bishops must not backtrack on the commitments they made in Dallas in 2002 - to do so will only cause further mistrust between the institutional Church and the laity that the hierarchy is committed to serve in Christ's name.

You are in our prayers, as are all the U.S. Bishops and the entire Church. We continue to look forward to creating a vibrant Church that advances the message of Christ's love for humanity.

Sincerely,

James E. Post
President
Voice of the Faithful