The near obliteration of public trust in the Catholic Church was undeniable, as was the accuracy of Doyle’s warning. Now he has a similar prediction: The Southern Baptist church could be headed down the same road.

In a March 2007 letter addressed to SBC president Page and to executive committee president Morris Chapman, Doyle warned that “clergy sex abuse is a scourge that knows no bounds of theology, denomination or institutional structure.”

Doyle said he was “not writing in a spirit of criticism but in a spirit of fraternal hope that you take pains to avoid the incredible harm to your church that the Catholic Church did not avoid because of its arrogance and obsession with power and image.”

Then Doyle began to outline the ways in which he fears SBC officials are falling into some of the Catholic patterns of dealing with abuse—or rather, not dealing with it. “To effectively address this scourge requires a strong cooperative effort,” he wrote. “Yet, in recent Baptist Press statements, I have seen that Southern Baptist leaders disclaim that possibility on the ground [sic] that the Southern Baptist Convention has ‘no authority’ over autonomous churches. While the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church is different from the congregational structure of Baptists, you should nevertheless realize that your ‘no authority’ argument is actually quite analogous to what Catholic bishops were espousing prior to 2002.”

When establishing the Office of Child and Youth Protection in 2002, Doyle says the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops found it to be an “extraordinary and unprecedented” step because the conference has no direct authority over any bishop in the country. These bishops considered themselves to have control over their own dioceses.

It would be a mistake, Doyle wrote, for SBC officials to think that the structure of the Catholic Church inherently allowed for oversight—it was simply the desperate need to hold priests accountable for abuse that drove the denomination to create a system to protect its most vulnerable.

Page’s response to Doyle’s letter was terse. After thanking Doyle for writing, Page quickly turned defensive, writing that the SBC has “some serious limitations due to the policy of our convention.”

Page went on, “While Catholic bishops did claim to have ‘no authority,’ Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over the local church. We do have influence, and we are attempting to utilize that influence to the fullest extent to provide this protection.”

Doyle tells the Scene that he wasn’t surprised by Page’s response, which he characterizes as dismissive. He says such reactions are standard for people in church leadership positions, who tend to place the needs of the institution before their Christian obligations.

Very powerful article in Nashville Scene on the lack of sexual abuser and abuser policy   in The Southern Baptist Convention. 

In all the times Vasquez has written to SBC officials, and most recently to most of the members of the executive committee charged with studying the feasibility of the predator database, not one has offered to help her. None has offered to counsel her, to refer her to a therapist or to sit face-to-face to hear her concerns, even though she’s requested to meet with the committee in person.