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Technorati"Much misunderstanding exists about the structure of the Catholic Church and the way in which it functions both nationally and internationally. The USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) has no direct authority over any bishop or eparch in the United States, nor does it have an infrastructure that is interconnected with the management or operations of the country’s 194 dioceses and eparchies, each of which is civilly and canonically independent," he clarified.
Doyle had warned Catholic bishops about the "looming clergy sex abuse nightmare" in the mid 1980s, but his warning went largely unheeded until 2002, he stated. That's when the USCCB established the Office of Child and Youth Protection. The latest annual review that the bishops commissioned found that for the second consecutive year, the number of clergy sex abuse claims received by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops and religious orders has dropped.
It wasn't the structure of the Catholic Church that allowed for the creation of an oversight mechanism, but rather, "the desperate need for a system of accountability that drove the creation of an oversight mechanism, and that mechanism was created outside the usual structure," he said.
Ken Ward, a Southern Baptist pastor in East Texas who admitted to molesting more than 40 boys, told ABC that he stayed under the local church radar and moved from church to church for years. He said the church can't handle these cases alone.
"If children in Southern Baptist churches are to be made safer, accountability for Southern Baptist clergy may also need to be established 'in a new way,'" said Doyle.
