The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ canonical affairs committee discussed the bishops’ recent revisions to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, said that “in the Charter revision process, the feedback we were getting was not to make any major revisions, that what we have has been working well—and so that’s the approach the revision process took.” He said that positive revisions include a glossary that defines terms and references to the presumption of innocence and mandatory Church reporting of allegations.
Defending the continued exclusion of the sexual abuse of adults from the document, the prelate said that “one reason is the potential ramifications—currently under the charter and the Essential Norms, we have a policy of zero tolerance and that is not necessarily the case with adult misconduct … Bringing them into the Essential Norms would be the whole process of having to take that to the Holy See, and just delaying this whole thing, in order to deal with these other issues under the Charter.”