The definitive rules of Vos Estis, which take effect in May, add to the original document on several specific points:

• Along with complaints of abuse by clerics and religious, the policies are also applied to complaints against lay people who lead "international associations of the faithful" that are recognized by the Vatican. The procedures could be invoked even after these leaders have left office.
• The complaints to be investigated include not only sexual acts with minors, but also those with vulnerable adults. Whereas the earlier version spoke of a "vulnerable person," the new rules speak of "a person who habitually has an imperfect use of reason, or with a vulnerable adult."
• Church investigators are not allowed to require someone who reports abuse to enter into a non-disclosure agreement. In the final version of Vos Estis, this protection is extended not only to people who report that they were abused, but also to witnesses.
• The final version demands "the legitimate protection of the good name and privacy of all persons involved."

The Vos Estis norms require ever diocese to have a "public, stable, and easily accessible" process for the reporting of abuse complaints, and provide for the handling of complaints against bishops as well as priests.

Questions remain

However, the revised norms leave a number of crucial questions unanswered. For instance:

• While lay leaders of Catholic organizations may be subject to canonical penalties, it is not clear how those penalties could be imposed (except insofar as they could be stripped of office), since the Holy See has no direct control over the lives of lay Catholics.
• The definition of a "vulnerable" adult remains open to a broad range of interpretations.
• The order to protect the reputation of everyone involved is obviously in tension with the requirement to conduct public investigations and encourage full disclosure.

To put the problem in more general terms, the definitive version of Vos Estis fails to resolve the basic problem with the original document: the enforcement of the norms remains entirely subject to the discretion of the bishops who interpret them.

Yet it is precisely the discretion of the bishops that has been called into question in recent years; the lay faithful have lost confidence in the willingness of their bishops—and even of the Holy See—to address the abuse scandal forthrightly.

Revelations about clerical abuse and cover-ups continue to emerge, despite promises of full disclosure, despite new policies and procedures.

Nearly three years ago, when the first version of Vos Estis was promulgated, I expressed these misgivings:

However, the new policy does not define the disciplinary action that would be taken against bishops who are found guilty of misconduct (including, under the new rules, the misconduct involved in covering up abuse).

The new policies require an investigation, conducted under the auspices of the Holy See, with a report eventually being made to the relevant Vatican dicastery. But the papal document does not indicate what sort of punishments might be imposed on offenders.

Nor do the new norms address the lack of transparency that has characterized—and could continue to characterize—the Vatican's investigations of episcopal misconduct.

While the papal document requires the Vatican to investigate charges and take appropriate action, there is no provision for any public explanation of the disciplinary action.

On those crucial points, the final version of Vos Estis changes nothing.

• Philip F. Lawler is the editor of Catholic World News (CWN), the first English-language Catholic news service operating on the internet, which he founded in 1995.
• First published by Catholic Culture. Republished with permission.

Lay movements and communities have given countless Catholics a chance to rediscover and deepen their faith. But a clear separation is needed between the spiritual and mission aspects of the organisations.

In 1998 St. John Paul II recognized the importance of lay movements. He said they were "one of the most significant fruits of that springtime in the church which was foretold by the Second Vatican Council."

But not all the fruit was good. Several movements and communities have faced Vatican-imposed reforms and even dissolution.

The Catholic Church has a limited number of options for intervening when it comes to lay movements and communities. While a pope can remove cardinals, priests and bishops, laypeople can be punished only by excommunication.

Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, is a professor of psychology and president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He told Catholic News Service Nov. 4 that before deciding to dissolve a movement or community, certain criteria should be met to indicate reform is possible.

A key issue, he said, is a willingness to have a clear separation of "spiritual guidance and external power" when it comes to decision-making.

"A spiritual director should never have the power to direct the movement or a decision for a person," he said. "There needs to be a separation between who decides the mission aspect ['forum externum'] and who knows about the spiritual side ['forum internum'].

This is a very important point which some of those movements and some of those religious congregations have not been taking seriously."

Another condition, Zollner said, is that there must be a set period of time for lay movement reform. And that a person not affiliated with the movement must determine whether the conditions of the reform have been met.

The movement itself "can't be the one to testify that they have changed because then you blow your own trumpet and people will question that," he said, "and rightfully so."

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

After trying unsuccessfully to raise the alarm both in her order and in the Vatican, she left, and is now a researcher and activist pushing for a change in Church structures that allow abuse and cover-up to happen.

A former member of the Marian Community of Reconciliation (MCR), a pontifically-recognized Society of Apostolic Life, Figueroa said that while much discussion in the Church has so far focused on the abuse and cover-up by priests and bishops, lay movements are next on the list.

Asked whether lay movements are the "next frontier," Figueroa said "absolutely," and pinned part of the problem on the Church granting "too much power to lay movements."

"They have lots of rights and no responsibilities, no accountability, so it's very complicated," she said, explaining that in her view, there need to be changes in canon law that better address the specific needs of lay movements which would also protect their members.

Speaking at a Nov. 27 Voices of Faith event in Rome, Figueroa recounted her story of entering the MCR after being abused by one of the high-ranking members of the male branch of the community, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), when she was 15.

At the time, the women's branch of the SCV - established by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in 1971 - had not been established yet, and Figueroa met the group through her brother in 1983.

Feeling a call to give herself to God, she began receiving spiritual direction from the order's vicar general, German Doig, who would later be found guilty of sexually abusing multiple people, including minors.

Figueroa said she was "naïve" and didn't understand what was happening when Doig began touching her during "exercises" to help her "manage her sexuality."

Convinced he had her best interests in mind but feeling uncomfortable, she asked him to stop and earnestly believed he had changed his behavior.

Still feeling a call to give her life to God, Figueroa became one of five women to start the women's branch, the MCR, in 1986.

Although she was happy, she said Figari never visited the community, calling him a "misogynist" who would always tell the women they were "less intelligent" than the men and needed to be "more masculine."

Liberation

Once the community began to grow, Figari stepped in and began managing the MCR on a daily basis, assigning the women to work in projects run by men, but essentially treating them like slaves, as they would work unpaid while the men's community received financial benefits, she said.

Figueroa, who was superior general at the time, objected and said she believed she could change Figari's behavior, but instead found herself demoted and assigned to the community house in Rome.

"It was the beginning of my liberation," she said, recounting how she was assigned to work as head of the women's office in the former Vatican department for laity.

It was while she was there that Doig died suddenly in 2001.

Overly defensive of men

Around this time, Figueroa said she had been confronted by a priest who said she was overly defensive of men and asked whether something had happened.

When she told him what Doig had done to her at the age of 15, he told her she had been sexually abused.

"For the first time I realized I was a victim," she said, explaining that although she was in her 40s, she began a long process of healing.

However, after Doig's death, Figari asked her to help promote his cause for canonization inside the Vatican.

Feeling conflicted, since many people at the time believed Doig to be a saint, Figueroa said she confided the situation in confession, and the priest's advice was to investigate since Doig could have reformed his behavior.

However, in 2006 she discovered there was another victim who had been abused after she was, and soon after that, another.

"He was not a saint, but a serial perpetrator." Continue reading

• Dr Rocio Figueroa is originally from Peru. Her doctorate in theology is from the Gregorian University in Rome. During her time in Rome she was also Responsible for the Section on Women's Issues in the Vatican. She currently lectures in Theology at Good Shepherd Theological College, Auckland.
• Image: Altavoz