Good start for bishops.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Two hundred years ago, when his armies were raging through Europe, the emperor Napoleon threatened Catholic officials, "I will destroy your church!" Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, a leading papal statesman, retorted, "He will never succeed. We have not managed to do it ourselves."

The scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church in this country has some Catholic faithful wondering if a force as powerful as an attacking army has surrounded the church. The church hierarchy's mishandling of the years-long sex abuse scandal and the attendant confusion over church policy regarding issues from pedophilia to the ordination of women has made many American Catholics justifiably angry.

Last week's draft recommendations of the Catholic Bishops' Ad-Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse go a long way toward addressing the mess the church has on its hands. When the U.S. Conference of Bishops meets in Dallas this week, it should follow up with acceptance and implementation of the committee's proposals.

While the recommendations are constructive and far-reaching, the bishops should acknowledge that they are deficient in two respects. One is the committee's proposal that bishops be given the discretion to keep a priest in active ministry if he had committed a single act of sexual abuse in the past - provided he had repented, received treatment and had caused no other known problems. The other is the ad-hoc committee's silence on the issue of what to do about church officials who have perpetuated sexual abuse by moving offending priests from one parish to another.

Both these problems are complicated, and it may not be possible to devise a single policy or statement that adequately and fairly addresses all circumstances. Tolerating one instance of past sexual abuse seems monstrous in light of the fact that reported cases tend to be indicators of other offenses. Yet a zero tolerance policy would need to account for the fact that some priests have been the target of false accusations. Similarly, the actions by higher-ups range from apparent cover-ups of crimes to a naive trust in assurances of repentance.

The bishops must resolve these conflicts in a way that restores American Catholics' trust in the safety and integrity of their church. Anger over the scandal tests loyal Catholics daily as their church endures a bombardment by critics from across the political spectrum that is without precedent in modern times.

Conservative commentators point to a flourishing homosexual subculture in a minority of U.S. seminaries as fueling the sex scandal. Article 18, the final recommendation in the bishops' draft proposals, reinforces the view that continuing reform of some seminaries is in order. Meanwhile, fallen-away Catholics, disaffected Catholic feminists and non-Catholic observers wonder why the institution clings to an all-male, celibate priesthood.

Demands that the church address these issues in response to the failure of priestly discipline on the part of a few of the nearly 47,000 priests in the United States will not be discussed by the bishops in Dallas. And no one paying attention to Roman Catholicism today can believe that priestly celibacy or the ordination of women will be taken up by the current occupant of the chair of Saint Peter or by his successor.

Yet the American church is at an extraordinary and tragic moment in its history. The sex-abuse scandal has revealed a serious institutional weakness, while also opening the door to questions about long-standing church doctrines and disciplines. The bishops must address the sex scandal in a way that respects the trauma of victims, effectively sanctions offenders and strengthens the confidence of the faithful. The recommendations are a good beginning, but for the sake of their church and its members the bishops must go further.