Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops' Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children (review)

Nicholas Cafardi, former dean of the Duquesne University Law School, trained in both American and canon law, and a charter member of the American bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Youth (the "National Review Board"), is well situated to write a book that provides deep insight into how the sexual abuse of young people by members of the Catholic clergy was handled and mishandled by church authorities. Unfortunately, this is not that book.

Cafardi's book is divided into six chapters:"The Canonical Crime of Sexual Abuse of a Minor by a Cleric: An Historical Synopsis" (pp. 1–9),"The Scope of the Problem: An Historical Synopsis" (pp. 10–14),"The Canonical Landscape: The Failure of the Penal System" (pp. 15–46),"What Did the Bishops Do?" (pp. 47–112),"The Treatment Option" (pp. 115–41), and "Canonical Lessons to Be Learned" (pp. 146–55). The reader will find none of these chapters entirely satisfying. For example, the historical synopsis reads the history of canonical norms dealing with sexual sins involving clerics from the vantage point of the recent crisis and concludes that the sort of sexual abuse of young men by priests with which we have become all too familiar of late has been endemic to the Church since the age of the fathers. This anachronistic reading involves a recounting of historical data without the benefit of historical perspective. The account of what the American bishops did in response to their growing awareness of the problem of sexual abuse of minors by priests is equally unsatisfying. Cafardi recounts the now well-known story of how, although the American bishops should have been aware by 1992 that reappointment of priests who had sexually abused minors was fraught with dangers, some of them continued to make such reappointments with predictable catastrophic consequences. However, he offers no insight into why these bishops failed to learn from the past. By ending this account with only a passing mention of the interventions in 2001 by Pope John Paul II and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to change the universal law governing the delict of sexual abuse of minors by clerics and its prosecution and of the "Dallas Charter" enacted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as particular law for the United States, Cafardi leaves the story he narrates frustratingly incomplete. Of course, a book with the title Before Dallas does not promise to deal with these matters, but why would one publish such a truncated account in 2008?

In his treatment of the failure of the canonical penal system and elsewhere in this book, Cafardi singles out canon lawyers in general and Francis Morrisey, O.M.I.; James H. Provost; and this reviewer in particular as bearing special responsibility for the inability or unwillingness of bishops to use canonical penal law to address the clergy sexual abuse crisis effectively. Although those who played any role in the handling and mishandling of sexual abuse cases prior to 2001 (or even after) did not cover themselves with glory, Cafardi's characterization is unfair and misleading.