Word: charter
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...what some might consider the unlikeliest partisans of all. This week the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will meet in Dallas, charged by Pope John Paul II with arriving at a set of norms on clerical sexual abuse. In preparation, the group has released a draft of the charter it will put to a vote: a no-nonsense plan establishing a one-strike-and-you're-out rule for all future offenders (past abusers get more leniency) and requiring bishops to report any allegations to civil authorities. Upon reviewing it, most Catholics will probably hope it passes...
...addition to the charter's muscular response to abuse, there is a subtler but equally important message about the treatment of the American Catholic laity. The issue arises twice in the document. The bishops mandate the establishment of clergy-review boards to advise each diocesan bishop on abuse cases, and they specify that a board's majority will be "lay persons not in the employ of the diocese." Some dioceses have had such boards for years, but others do not, and the bishops are aiming for a uniform standard and process for handling accusations. In its conclusion the charter goes...
...Paul, along with a psychologist, a lawyer, a law-enforcement expert and other lay members and clergy. "It is my ministry." It has heard about 15 abuse cases since its founding in 1995; in the two cases with child victims, the board recommended the priests be defrocked. If the charter is adopted in Dallas next week, such panels will become part of the power structure in every diocese...
...about the police pursuing terrorists or serious criminals," says Roger Bingham, a spokesman for the human-rights group Liberty. "This raises the possibility of civil servants trawling through data collected for one purpose and used for another." The government rejects assertions that it is opportunistically creating a snooper's charter. "We're not talking about content of e-mails here," says a Home Office spokesman. "We're talking about dates and times of communications" - who contacted whom, and when. Requests for warrants to actually intercept content as part of a criminal investigation, he adds, would be subject to stringent criteria...
...Charter of 1650 evolved into Chapter 5, Section 1 of the Massachusetts state constitution, which remains in effect to this...