Collared-Falsely: Not every priest is rightly accused.

'This is like affirmative-action time for victims," says one frustrated Catholic priest. "The attitude seems to be that because the Church discriminated against victims [of clergy sexual abuse] in the past, they should make up for it by discriminating against priests now. Whatever happened to justice?"

Well might he ask. Take the case of an African priest who until recently was living and studying in the Washington, D.C., area. His story represents just one example of the kind of accusations to which any priest in this country is vulnerable in the present scandal-charged atmosphere.

While at home this summer, between school terms at Washington's John Paul II Institute, the priest received a letter from the academic dean informing him that a fellow student, an adult woman, had lodged a charge of sexual impropriety against him. The charge was filed with Paul S. Loverde, the bishop of Arlington, Va., in whose diocese the priest was residing during the academic term.

According to the woman's June 5 letter, the priest kissed her in her apartment, and tried to grope her as she struggled to escape. After wriggling free, the woman said, she "took him to a coffee shop to give him an opportunity to 'wake up' and apologize," which she claims he did not. "Before God, I swear that I am innocent," the African responded in a written statement to the dean. "I am ready to talk it over with [the woman] in your presence."

On September 6, the priest met in Arlington with the diocese's investigator. By the priest's account, his accuser had taken him to her apartment briefly to show him books and photographs. They went to a restaurant for tea, then parted. If he had made sexual advances, the priest asked, why would she have agreed to go for tea with him afterward?

After talking to character witnesses and others, Bishop Loverde issued a ruling on September 13. In a letter to the priest, Loverde stated that "there is inadequate evidence to dismiss the allegation as unfounded. While I understand that you denied any inappropriate behavior, I have not been provided adequate evidence to substantiate your claim." Though the priest had never been allowed to confront his accuser (and though, by Bishop Loverde's own admission, she had not proved her case), the bishop judged him unfit to live in Arlington-a finding allowed under canon law because the African was not formally a priest of his diocese.

In a statement provided to National Review, the African, whose academic career at the institute is effectively over, denounced the investigation as a "sham" and criticized the diocese and the John Paul II Institute for not defending him. "I am innocent, yet I am being treated as if I am guilty," he protested.

Priests across America are afraid that the same or worse will happen to them-and that they stand to lose far more. They fear that their bishops, eager to get the sex-abuse scandal off the front pages, will be willing to cashier priests on the basis of mere allegations, and in violation of their canonical rights. "Virtually no trust remains in the bishops on the part of the priests," says one cleric from a mid-Atlantic diocese. "Right and left, the guys are just accepting the fact that we don't trust our bishop, and he doesn't trust us; that he doesn't listen to us, and we won't want to listen to him."

"There are a number of priests who want to take early retirement," adds a senior priest of a major archdiocese. "They no longer have any confidence in their bishops. They want out. They believe these bishops consider their priests to be employees, nothing more."

Spend any time talking with priests today and you're likely to hear about the case of Msgr. Michael Smith Foster, the Archdiocese of Boston's top canon lawyer. Foster was removed from ministry this summer after a Boston man filed a civil lawsuit accusing him of sexual abuse. But evidence emerged that the accuser was probably lying, and the suit collapsed. The archdiocese then restored Msgr. Foster to his duties-only to remove him again within days when the same discredited source made new allegations.

"If this can happen to one of the most highly respected canonists in the nation, as a result of an extremely weak allegation, at this point, what hope does the average parish priest who has not cracked open a canon-law textbook since before his ordination hold in a similar situation?" asks Pete Vere, a Catholic layman and licensed canonist who writes frequently on canon-law topics.

At a meeting this summer in Dallas, U.S. bishops adopted norms for dealing with the sex-abuse crisis. Since then, canonists and priests have reported numerous instances of clerics' being manhandled by bishops in violation of their rights under Church law-often on the basis of only one uncorroborated allegation. A high-level Church source tells National Review that an embargoed study of the Dallas norms, to be presented at the upcoming meeting of the Canon Law Society of America, will criticize the U.S. bishops for enforcing the norms even though Rome has not ruled on them.

According to the source, the study blasts bishops for exempting themselves from the Dallas norms, ignoring statutes of limitations in canon law, and denying accused priests their canonical right to know the details of charges laid against them. It also slams the bishops for adopting a definition of sexual abuse so broad that a priest could be judged guilty even if he never laid a hand on the alleged victim-and for suspending priests on the basis of an accusation, even with no clear way of determining whether the accusation is credible.

The Vatican is expected to rule on the Dallas norms any day. In the unlikely event that they are accepted, some priests and canonists predict that Dallas's mile-wide definition of sexual abuse will tempt unscrupulous bishops to get rid of priests they don't like by means of trumped-up sex charges. Fearing the worst no matter what Rome says, many priests have begun organizing for discussion, mutual support, and protection.

In Boston, clerics have been active for months in the Boston Priests Forum. And in New York, a nascent group called Voice of the Ordained recently met to air their grievances and talk about the calamity that has befallen the priesthood. About 140 current and former priests attended. "I think the future is going to bring a lot of lawsuits against bishops by priests," Msgr. William Varvaro, a canon lawyer, told the crowd. "That's what the lack of trust has brought about How is it going to be restored? I have no idea. It's going to take almost a generation."

The same applies to relations between priests and the laity, the monsignor added. The accounts of abuse are too numerous, and too sickening, for many parishioners today to muster either the old confidence in priests or sympathy for clerics as a whole in their predicament. And as long as Rome insists on keeping in office bishops, such as Boston's Bernard Cardinal Law, who have proven they cannot be trusted to deal responsibly with these grave matters, many Catholics may prefer to take their chances with a zero- tolerance regime-no matter how unfair it may be to priests.

But if justice for all Catholics is the ideal, zero tolerance remains a deeply flawed idea-and an unnecessary one. The Catholic Church has long had canonical rules and procedures for dealing with sexually abusive priests. Had they been followed, they would have prevented this catastrophe. Governing involves making decisions after reasoned deliberation, and taking responsibility for those decisions. In no just society can it mean drawing up laws and applying them mechanistically-as any aspirin-toting fourth grader suspended from school under zero-tolerance drug policies will attest.

The American bishops abdicated their role as governors a generation ago. Unfortunately, there is no indication that they have either the moral courage to understand what they've done, or the decency to resign before creating still more victims-this time, grown men in Roman collars-of their misuse of power.