Abuse Scandal Is Now 'History,' Top Bishop Says
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

ASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — Just after the release on Friday of two long-awaited studies on the sexual abuse of children by more than 4,000 priests, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops declared with emphatic finality in a news conference that the bishops had faced the problem, come clean and swept the church of abusers.

"I assure you that known offenders are not in ministry," the leader, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., said as he punched out his words. "The terrible history recorded here today is history."

One report said that "there must be consequences" for the leaders who failed to stop the abuses and that the bishops should hold one another accountable in the future. That did not satisfy critics, who said the church was continuing to sidestep the most sensitive and intractable issues that the scandal had raised.

In reacting to the reports, advocacy groups and reporters peppered the bishops with a host of questions like, Should not bad bishops be removed? Should the celibacy requirement for priests be abandoned? Should seminaries bar gay men?

And why have most bishops not released the names of offending priests, many of whom are living unsupervised and anonymously in the civilian world as a result of the church's new "zero tolerance" policy?

"What Catholics want to know is has there been a pedophile priest in my parish or in my school?" said Peter Isely, a psychotherapist in Milwaukee who is a board member of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "The most useful information the bishops have they're not giving us.