National meeting of Catholic bishops opens in Bellevue, draws critics

Under giant chandeliers in a Bellevue hotel ballroom, some 200 of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops, clad in black clerical attire and white collars, met for their annual spring meeting to discuss a statement opposing physician-assisted suicide and revisions to their sex-abuse prevention policies.

Outside the ballroom, critics — including an abuse victims' group and advocates for being able to help terminally ill patients die — held their own news conferences.

The meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops began Wednesday and continues through Friday at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue.

The proposed revisions to the sex-abuse charter are minor and advocates for abuse victims have criticized the bishops for that, saying there's no provision to hold accountable bishops who don't comply with the policy.

They cited recent examples in Philadelphia, where a grand jury found 37 priests accused of sexual abuse who had been allowed to remain in active ministry, and in Kansas City, Mo., where the bishop didn't heed past warnings about a priest who was eventually charged with possessing child pornography.

"This policy was already weak," said Barbara Dorris, one of three members of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests who demonstrated outside the Hyatt Wednesday.

Merely tweaking the policy won't help protect more children, said Dorris, who proposed, at the least, that bishops tell their fellow prelates who don't comply with the policy that they are unwelcome at bishops' gatherings.

The policy, passed in 2002 and revised in 2005, requires, among other provisions, that any priest with a single credible allegation of sexual abuse of a minor be removed from ministry.

Spokane Bishop Blase Cupich, chairman of the bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, said that in most of the approximately 200 dioceses in the country, the charter is working.

It is only when the charter is not followed correctly that "we get into difficulties," he said in a news conference Wednesday.

The full body of bishops is scheduled to debate and vote on the policy revisions Thursday.

Also on Thursday, the bishops are to debate and vote on a statement opposing what they call physician-assisted suicide — the first time the full body of U.S. bishops has issued such a statement.

The document is expected to be "a public policy statement, a way for the Catholic Church to take part in the debate on legalizing physician-assisted suicide in many states," said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, who chairs the bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

DiNardo cited several states where such measures have been legalized, including Washington, where voters in 2008 passed an initiative allowing doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for terminally ill patients seeking to hasten their own deaths.

"People who request death are vulnerable. They need care and protection," the bishops' proposed statement says. "To offer them lethal drugs is a victory not for freedom but for the worst form of neglect."

Compassion & Choices, which advocates for choice in what it calls aid in dying, held its own news conference at the Hyatt, rebutting points in the statement.

The group contends that majorities of people of every faith and belief — including Roman Catholics — believe in permitting terminally ill patients to make their own choices about dying and that studies have shown end-of-life care is improved where aid in dying is legal.

Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com