NATION/POLITICS
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
Tuesday, November 13, 2018 5A
Bishops delay votes on combating sex abuse crisis
PATRICK SEMANSKY I Associated Press
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston,
president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, prepares
to lead the USCCB’s annual fall meeting, Monday, Nov. 12, in Baltimore.
BY DAVID MCFADDEN
AND DAVID CRARY
Associated Press
BALTIMORE — In an abrupt
change of plans, the president
of the U.S. Conference of Catho
lic Bishops opened the group’s
national meeting Monday by
announcing it will delay for at
least several months any votes on
proposed new steps to address the
clergy sex abuse crisis that is rock
ing the church.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, of
Galveston-Houston, said the delay
was requested by the Vatican,
which asked that the U.S. bish
ops wait until after a Vatican-
convened global meeting on sex
abuse in February.
DiNardo expressed disappoint
ment but told the U.S. bishops,
“I remain hopeful that this addi
tional consultation will ultimately
improve our response to the crisis
we face.”
The bishops are meeting
through Wednesday in Balti
more and had been expected to
consider several steps to combat
abuse, including a new code of
conduct for themselves and the
creation of a special commission
to review complaints against the
bishops.
At their meeting, which contin
ues through Wednesday, the bish
ops may proceed with discussions
of these proposals, which were
drafted in September by the bish
ops’ Administrative Committee.
But there will be no immediate
vote.
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, of Chi
cago, suggested that the bishops
hold a special assembly in March
to vote on the measures after con
sidering the results of the global
meeting in February.
Abuse scandals have roiled the
Roman Catholic Church world
wide for decades, but there have
been major developments this
year in the U.S.
In July, Pope Francis removed
U.S. church leader Theodore
McCarrick as a cardinal after
church investigators said an alle
gation that he groped a teenage
altar boy in the 1970s was cred
ible. Subsequently, several former
seminarians and priests reported
that they too had been abused or
harassed by McCarrick as adults,
triggering debate over who might
have known and covered up
McCarrick’s misconduct.
In August, a grand jury report in
Pennsylvania detailed decades of
abuse and cover-up in six dioceses,
alleging that more than 1,000 chil
dren had been abused over the
years by about 300 priests. Since
then, a federal prosecutor in Phil
adelphia has begun working on a
federal criminal case centered on
child exploitation, and attorneys
general in several other states
have launched investigations.
DiNardo, in his address opening
the bishops’ assembly, told survi
vors of clergy abuse that he was
“deeply sorry.”
The church, he said, should
not revictimize survivors “by
demanding they heal on our
timeline.”
Announcement of a delay in the
voting drew skeptical reactions.
“We had this agenda, we were
moving forward on these docu
ments, this was our goal,” said
Bishop Christopher Coyne, of the
Vermont diocese of Burlington,
and the communications chair for
the three-day conference. “And
now .. it will look like we don’t
have to come up with much.”
Coyne said he believed there
were “no machinations” leading
to the delay, but he had concerns
about how it would be perceived
outside the assembly hall.
“The Vatican just made a big
mistake in asking US bishops to
delay their votes on clergy abuse
protocols,” tweeted John Gehring,
the Catholic program director at
Faith in Public Life, a Washington-
based clergy network. “The optics
are terrible, and it sends a mes
sage, intended or not, that Rome
doesn’t recognize the urgency of
the moment.”
Mississippi senator’s ‘public
hanging’ remark slammed
BY EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. — A
newly published video shows
a white Republican U.S. sen
ator in Mississippi praising
someone by saying: “If he
invited me to a public hang
ing, I’d be on the
front row.”
Sen. Cindy Hyde-
Smith, who faces a
black Democratic
challenger in a Nov.
27 runoff, said Sun
day that her Nov. 2
remark was “exag
gerated expression
of regard” for some
one who invited her
to speak and “any attempt to
turn this into a negative con
notation is ridiculous.”
Mississippi has a history of
racially motivated lynchings
of black people. The NAACP
website says that between
1882 and 1968, there were
4,743 lynchings in the United
States, and nearly 73 percent
of the victims were black.
It says Mississippi had 581
during that time, the highest
number of any state.
Hyde-Smith is challenged
by former congressman and
former U.S. agriculture sec
retary Mike Espy.
“Cindy Hyde-Smith’s com
ments are reprehensible,”
Espy campaign spokesman
Danny Blanton said in a
statement Sunday. “They
have no place in our political
discourse, in Mississippi, or
our country. We need lead
ers, not dividers, and her
words show that she lacks
the understanding and judg
ment to represent the people
of our state.”
The video was shot in
Tupelo, in front of a statue of
Elvis Presley, who was born
in the city in northeastern
Mississippi. It shows a small
group of white people clap
ping politely for Hyde-Smith
after a cattle rancher intro
duced her.
“I referred to accepting
an invitation to a speaking
engagement,” said Hyde-
Smith, who is also a cattle
rancher, in a statement Sun
day. “In referencing the one
who invited me, I used an
exaggerated expression of
regard, and any attempt to
turn this into a negative con
notation is ridiculous.”
Hyde-Smith and Espy each
received about 41 percent
of the vote in a four-person
race Tuesday to advance to
the runoff. The winner gets
the final two years of a term
started by longtime Republi
can Sen. Thad Cochran.
Republican Gov. Phil Bry
ant appointed Hyde-Smith
to temporarily succeed
Cochran, who retired amid
health concerns in
April. She will serve
until the special
election is resolved.
Espy in 1986
became the first
African-American
since Reconstruc
tion to win a U.S.
House seat in Mis
sissippi, and if he
defeats Hyde-Smith,
he would be the first African-
American since Reconstruc
tion to represent the state in
the U.S. Senate.
Hyde-Smith, who is
endorsed by President Don
ald Trump, is the first woman
to represent Mississippi in
either chamber of Congress,
and after being appointed
is trying to become the first
woman elected to the U.S.
Senate from the state.
Lamar White Jr., pub
lisher of a left-leaning Loui
siana news site called The
Bayou Brief, posted the video
Sunday on social media.
White told The Associated
Press he received the video
late Saturday from “a very
reliable, trusted source,”
but he would not reveal the
person’s name. He said that
source received it from the
person who shot the video.
White said he believes he
received the video because
he has been writing about
racism in the South for about
a dozen years.
“There’s no excuse to say
what she said,” White said of
Hyde-Smith.
The national NAACP
president Derrick Johnson,
who is from Mississippi,
said Hyde-Smith’s comment
shows a lack of judgment.
“Senator Cindy Hyde-
Smith’s shameful remarks
prove once again how
Trump has created a social
and political climate that
normalizes hateful and rac
ist rhetoric,” Johnson said in
a statement. “Hyde-Smith’s
decision to joke about ‘hang
ing,’ in a state known for its
violent and terroristic his
tory toward African Ameri
cans is sick. To envision
this brutal and degenerate
type of frame during a time
when Black people, Jewish
People and immigrants are
still being targeted for vio
lence by White nationalists
and racists is hateful and
hurtful.”
A Republican activist who
initially supported another
candidate in the special U.S.
Senate election said he will
vote for Hyde-Smith in the
runoff, even though he con
siders her a weak candidate.
“That comment about ‘a
public hanging’ is much ado
about nothing,” said Scott
Brewster of Brandon, who is
white. “She’s not very smart
and made a tone deaf com
ment. It doesn’t make her a
racist.”
A Republican state law
maker in Mississippi, Rep.
Karl Oliver, came under
sharp criticism in May 2017
after he posted on Face-
book that people should by
lynched for removing Con
federate monuments.
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Judge: Sides in Florida recount
should ‘ramp down’ rhetoric
BY TERRY SPENCER
Associated Press
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A judge
on Monday told lawyers representing the
warring sides in the Florida recount that
they need to “ramp down the rhetoric” after
Republicans, including President Donald
Trump, alleged illegal activity, because the
unsubstantiated accusations are eroding
confidence in the election for Senate and
governor.
The state’s law enforcement arm and
elections monitors have found no evidence
of wrongdoing, but lawyers for the Repub
lican party and the GOP candidates joined
with Trump in alleging that irregularities,
unethical behavior and fraud have taken
place since the polls closed last week.
“An honest vote count is no longer pos
sible” in Florida, Trump declared Monday,
without elaborating. He demanded that the
election night results — which showed the
Republicans leading based upon incom
plete ballot counts— be used to determine
the winner. The recount that is underway is
mandated by state law.
Trump went on to allege that “new ballots
showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots
are missing or forged” and that “ballots (are)
massively infected.” It was unclear what he
was referring to.
Much of the Republicans’ ire was cen
tered on Broward County and its Supervisor
of Elections Brenda Snipes, a Democrat who
was appointed in 2003 by then-Republican
governor Jeb Bush. She has been re-elected
four times.
Critics have suggested the slow pace
of ballot-counting in Broward reflects
wrongdoing.
Snipes has said this year’s count was
encumbered by the unexpectedly high turn
out for a midterm election and the unusual
length of this year’s ballots, which contained
12 state constitutional amendment propos
als, partly as a result of a constitutional revi
sion commission that meets once every 20
years.
Bush said Monday on Twitter that Snipes
should be removed from office, saying there
was “no question” that she “failed to comply
with Florida law on multiple counts, under
mining Floridians’ confidence in our elec
toral process.”
State law requires a machine recount in
races where the margin is less than 0.5 per
centage points.
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