NY Archdiocese giving accused priests a choice:

Cardinal Edward M. Egan, head of the New York Archdiocese, is trying something new. Since June, he has offered seven priests that the archdiocese believes have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children a choice.

They can spend the rest of their lives in closely supervised housing, where, in addition to receiving regular therapy, they must fill out a daily log of their comings and goings. Or they can leave the priesthood and the lifetime security net that comes with it.

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In the New York Archdiocese, the priests who received the letter fall into one of several categories, Mr. Zwilling said.

Some have been convicted in a canonical trial but determined to be too elderly or infirm to endure being defrocked and are instead sentenced to a life of prayer and penance. Others have had the accusations against them referred to an archdiocesan advisory board consisting mostly of laypeople, including psychologists and lawyers. The board, which can interview the priest but does not have to, issues a recommendation to the cardinal on whether the priest should continue to minister.

The archdiocese notifies law enforcement authorities of all allegations that could result in criminal charges. But in many cases, with the accusations decades old, statutes of limitations had long since run out.

Those who defend priests have said the New York policy is too harsh, especially since the board that decides whether an accusation is credible does not have to give the priest a chance to defend himself. But Mr. Zwilling said the archdiocese was doing what it had to do.

“If there has been a finding and a belief that a cleric has misbehaved, we want to do all that we can to protect against such misbehavior occurring in the future,” Mr. Zwilling said this week.

Before the new program, called the Shepherd Program, was put into effect, most accused priests lived on their own, as they do in much of the country, barred from functioning as priests but required only to tell the archdiocese every few months where they lived, Mr. Zwilling said.

It is typically difficult for laypeople to find out where abusive priests are living, said Paul Baier, co-director of bishopaccountability.org. “Here in Boston they’ve removed 150 of them, and no one knows where they are,” he said. “In Los Angeles they have 200 or 300 of them, and no one knows where they are.”

But the Rev. Michael Sullivan, chairman of the canonical board of Justice for Priests and Deacons, a national organization that helps clerics accused of sexual offenses, said that New York’s program was one of the strictest he had heard of.

“I don’t read in their policy that the person has an opportunity for a different job within the church unless they accept laicization,” Father Sullivan said, referring to the conversion of priests to laymen. “My sense is that if the canonical courts cannot prove anything, that that becomes overly restrictive, and that’s unjust.”

While the letter to the priests mandates psychotherapy, it does not speak of rehabilitation or of leaving the program. “That was the situation we found ourselves in the past, where individual clerics would go through intensive therapy and would be judged able to return to ministry, and it didn’t work,” Mr. Zwilling said. “They relapsed — that led to all the charges about shuffling priests around. With what we know today, I don’t think that can be an alternative.”

Priests who agree to enter the program may not say Mass in public, dress as a priest, be alone with children or “inappropriately use computers,” the letter says. They must receive therapy and spiritual counseling. And they must fill out a logbook every day, have it signed by a monitor and be prepared to document their claims.