Canon Law

CARDINAL JOHN KROL BORN: October 26, 1910, fourth of eight children of John Krol and Anne Pietruszkla Krol, in Cleveland. BAPTIZED: October 30, 1910, St. Hyacinth Church, Cleveland. CONFIRMED: November 1920, St. Hyacinth Church. EDUCATION: St. Mary's College, Orchard Lake, Mich. 1929-31; St. Mary's Seminary, Cleveland, 1931-37; Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, School of Canon Law, licentiate in canon law, 1938-40; Pontifical Catholic University of America, School of Canon Law, doctorate in canon law. SECULAR WORK: Meat cutter and manager of Kroger store in Cleveland, 1927-29.

The Rev. Robert K. Orr may be awaiting trial on child pornography charges, but he is still ensconced in the rectory at All Hallows Church. And he is not leaving without a fight. Father Orr plans to reject the latest severance package offered by the parish and the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, his attorney, John Elbert, said yesterday. That could set the stage for a legal battle that pits canon law against civil law, Elbert added. "I don't want to take them to court," Elbert said.

The Most Rev. Walter Paska, 84, retired auxiliary bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, died of complications of a stroke Saturday at AristaCare in Plymouth Meeting. The archdiocese, as the archeparchy is also known, covers Eastern Pennsylvania and all of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia and numbers 22,500 communicants. From 1975 until 2006, Bishop Paska was the judicial vicar and vocations director of the archeparchy.

Canon law and ministry of married priests Joseph McOscar is presiding at marriages (Community Voices, May 12) that the Catholic Church in Philadelphia will not for a myriad of reasons. So, for these Catholics, McOscar is providing a Christian wedding ceremony and, in many cases, a Mass instead of a sterile civil ceremony. He is baptizing babies the church will not. And he is blessing some funerals. Who is to say that canon law should forbid all this? Can you truthfully say that Jesus would forbid this?

A proposal by the Pennsylvania Council of Churches to toughen penalties and reporting requirements for members of the clergy in cases of sexual abuse has evoked concern from the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference. At issue is an amendment by Rep. Karen A. Ritter (D., Lehigh) that would include clergy in legislation requiring health professionals to report to authorities any incidents of sexual abuse on patients committed by members of their profession. The Rev. Paul D. Gehris, lobbyist for the Council of Churches, said the legislation needed to be expanded, because ministers and priests, like doctors and dentists, had often looked the other way when made aware of sexual abuse of parishioners by colleagues.

Among the many issues that have surfaced in light of the sex-abuse furor have been the matters of activating married priests (25,000 in the United States alone) back into service and rendering the celibacy requirement optional. After being dispensed of my duties as a cleric by the institutional church some 25 years ago, I began to be called back by the people to ministry in the early '90s. Since then, I have found the old argument about lack of dedication between marriage and ministry to be totally specious.

Last month, four Vatican officials and four American bishops met in Rome to revise the proposed zero-tolerance policy for sexually abusive priests that an American bishops conference adopted last summer. Their instrument of retreat was the Code of Canon Law, an archaic standard of justice ill-suited to deal with the sex-abuse crisis facing the Roman Catholic Church. Survivors of clergy abuse rightly protested the proposed revisions, claiming that they gut the intent of the get-tough policy.

Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua broke civil and church laws when he ordered aides in 1994 to shred a list identifying dozens of Philadelphia-area priests suspected of molesting children, an expert on canon law and clergy sex abuse testified on Thursday. "That was like obstructing justice cubed," the Rev. Thomas P. Doyle told a Common Pleas Court jury. "He's got a list of men who may have abused children - and he's going to shred it?" The assertion thrust the late cardinal squarely into the spotlight for the first time in the landmark child-sex-abuse and endangerment trial against his former secretary for clergy, Msgr.

When the Rev. Thomas Patrick Michael Doyle was rapidly climbing the hierarchy at the Vatican embassy here, he was one of the first to sense a deep, hidden, potentially explosive problem facing the church. Consider the title of a report he helped write: "The Problem of Sexual Molestation By Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting The Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner. " It was published 17 years ago. Its recommendations went virtually nowhere. "The Manual," as it came to be known, was an initiative by Father Doyle, an impassioned canon lawyer whose coauthors were a renowned Catholic psychiatrist and a headline-hungry defense attorney.

I'D FEEL MORE hopeful about newly elected Pope Francis if some of the cardinals who elected him Wednesday had excused themselves from voting. The new pope must reckon with the ongoing fallout of the worldwide sex-abuse scandal that has shaken the Roman Catholic Church to its core. Although priests have been convicted of molesting innocents, no cardinal has even been defrocked for his part in covering up the perversions that have devastated generations of families. What's the likelihood that these self-interested cardinals would vote for a pontiff who might remove them from the church?

Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua broke civil and church laws when he ordered aides in 1994 to shred a list identifying dozens of Philadelphia-area priests suspected of molesting children, an expert on canon law and clergy sex abuse testified Thursday. "That was like obstructing justice cubed," the Rev. Thomas P. Doyle told a Common Pleas Court jury. "He's got a list of men who may have abused children - and he's going to shred it?" The assertion thrust the late cardinal squarely into the spotlight for the first time in the landmark child-sex-abuse and endangerment trial against his former secretary for clergy, Msgr.

The Most Rev. Walter Paska, 84, retired auxiliary bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, died of complications of a stroke Saturday at AristaCare in Plymouth Meeting. The archdiocese, as the archeparchy is also known, covers Eastern Pennsylvania and all of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia and numbers 22,500 communicants. From 1975 until 2006, Bishop Paska was the judicial vicar and vocations director of the archeparchy.

'Glaring disconnect' in the actions of teachers Thank goodness that Pennsylvania lawmakers are looking at ways to have the commonwealth join the majority of states, which ban strikes by public-school teachers ("25 school contracts up in air," Aug. 27). There is such a glaring disconnect between the teachers' pronouncements that they are a devoted, essential profession (akin to our police and firefighters), when they can walk out of the classroom onto the picket line if they do not get their salary and benefit demands met (while being better compensated already than our police and firefighters)

Last month, four Vatican officials and four American bishops met in Rome to revise the proposed zero-tolerance policy for sexually abusive priests that an American bishops conference adopted last summer. Their instrument of retreat was the Code of Canon Law, an archaic standard of justice ill-suited to deal with the sex-abuse crisis facing the Roman Catholic Church. Survivors of clergy abuse rightly protested the proposed revisions, claiming that they gut the intent of the get-tough policy.

Among the many issues that have surfaced in light of the sex-abuse furor have been the matters of activating married priests (25,000 in the United States alone) back into service and rendering the celibacy requirement optional. After being dispensed of my duties as a cleric by the institutional church some 25 years ago, I began to be called back by the people to ministry in the early '90s. Since then, I have found the old argument about lack of dedication between marriage and ministry to be totally specious.