The Catholic New World: Review board head to step down

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

The interim chairwoman of the lay National Review Board, Illinois Appellate Court Justice Anne M. Burke, announced that she plans to leave the board along with three other members June 30.

“When we were appointed, the bishops did not give us terms, so several months ago, we all decided what our terms would be, and I decided I would leave June 30,” Burke said. “It’s been two years, and it’s been a very intense and stressful two years.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops formed the board in 2002 as part of a package of abuse-prevention policies, a time when the bishops were reacting quickly because of an unfolding national church crisis spawned by Boston Globe articles on widespread child sex abuse by priests in the Boston Archdiocese, Burke said.

The policies are stated in the bishops’ 2002 “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.” The charter included the establishment of a lay National Review Board named by the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to monitor compliance with the policies.

Burke said in a May 3 telephone interview that she expects the bishops to move forward with plans for an annual audit to monitor compliance with the charter and a second-phase study of the causes and context of the clergy sex abuse crisis, despite the tabling by the bishops’ Administrative Committee in March of a funding request for the study. The initial phase was released in February.

The study is mandated by the charter but the funding has to be approved by the bishops, who plan to discuss the issue at their June meeting. Any efforts to return to self-monitoring could backfire in terms of credibility with the laity, she said at an April 23 presentation in Peoria.

“I have news for them. It’s not their church. It’s our church,” she said. “The church belongs to all of us.”

Given the situation, Burke said, she might prefer to stay on the board another few months.

“Is it ever a good time to leave?” she said. “If I had known this would be going on, maybe I would have stayed until November, but I said I was leaving in June, so it’s June. … I expect that the bishops meant what they said when they wrote the charter and they will move forward.”

In a telephone interview with Catholic News Service, Burke said that five members of the 12-member review board are voluntarily resigning this year. She added that she is unsure if replacements will be named by the bishops at their June 14-20 meeting in Denver or if the bishops will discuss funding for the report on the causes and context of abuse at the June gathering.

Regarding resignations, Burke told CNS that no term limits were set when review board members were named in 2002 and that individual board members have set their own termination dates based on their other commitments.

Four members, including Burke, will resign at the end of June, she said. The others resigning in June are:

u Robert Bennett, attorney and head of civil litigation of the Washington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He is head of a review board committee that prepared a Feb. 27 report on the crisis based on interviews with 85 people, including bishops, priests, sex abuse victims, theologians and Vatican officials.

u William Burleigh, board chairman and former president of E.W. Scripps Co.

u Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff for President Clinton who now heads his own public policy institute in Monterey Bay, Calif.

Burke said a fifth member, Alice Bourke Hayes, former president of the University of San Diego, plans to leave at the end of November.

Burke added that the review board and the bishops’ sexual abuse ad hoc committee have drawn up a joint list of replacement candidates for consideration by the bishops.

In Washington April 30, USCCB spokesman Bill Ryan told CNS that the June agenda regarding child sex abuse issues has yet to be established.

Ryan said that the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse will meet in mid-May to finalize the topics to be discussed.

“We won’t know until then,” said Ryan in response to a question about funding and the naming of new review board members.

Burke said that at the May ad hoc committee meeting, the review board also will present a proposal regarding how to conduct a second annual audit to see if dioceses are complying with the charter.

Burke was named to the review board when it was formed in June 2002 and became interim head a year later after the resignation of former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating. Keating left shortly after his controversial remark comparing some bishops to members of the Mafia because of their reluctance to comply with an audit to check on compliance with the charter.

Results of that initial audit were released in January and found that nearly 90 percent of 191 U.S. diocese and eparchies were in compliance with the 2002 charter.

Contributing: CNS