Two-thirds of Catholic bishops leading 178 dioceses in the US have in the past allowed priests known to have been involved in abuse to continue working in their diocese, a survey by the Dallas Morning News has revealed.
The finding, on the eve of the bishops' special conference in Dallas, emphasises the extent to which the crisis faced by the US church is no longer one simply about priestly abuse and the 225 priests who have been forced to resign or been suspended since January.
It is now, critics say, about systemic cover-up and failure to deal with the problem and a culture of impunity in the leadership of the church.
The two-day meeting is due to discuss a draft statement on protecting children whose main proposals argue for a zero-tolerance policy towards new abusers and those past abusers deemed still to manifest abusing tendencies.
Its recommendation that one-off past abusers, who have been deemed by psychiatrists no longer to be a threat, be allowed to remain in the ministry in a limited form is deeply controversial. Polls show 80 per cent of US Catholics support automatic laicisation and 75 per cent think the church has done a poor job in dealing with sexually abusive priests.
The depth of lay anger has sparked an unprecedented interest in the meeting, which the bishops must hope will be a watershed and turning point.
"For the integrity of the church leadership, this is the most important meeting they've ever had," Dr Jay P. Dolan, a University of Notre Dame historian, argues. He says the gathering far overshadows any other since the nation's bishops began meeting regularly in 1919.
"I hope something will happen in Dallas that will speak to the people and say to the people, 'We've got it. We know that we've mishandled this and we've got it'," Archbishop Harry Flynn of Minneapolis-St Paul and leader of the committee which drafted the proposed statement, told ABC News.
But lay critics and victims' groups who will lobby the meeting say the statement does not address the role and future of bishops who have covered up abuse. That is a matter for Rome, not the conference, the church says.
The message from Rome is mixed. The Vatican has said it will not comment on the meeting until it is over, but a number of influential figures have cautioned against excessive zeal in opening church files to prosecutors and the Vatican is likely to resist wholesale sackings of bishops, four of whom have resigned this year.
The US bishops will also face conflicting pressures on how they deal with the issue of homosexual priests, said by a respected psychotherapist, Dr Richard Sipe, on the basis of a study of 2,700 priests, to number 30 per cent, half of them sexually active.
