Conscience is an active virtue. It is an active combining of knowledge of the good with moral courage to do the good.

-Thomas Aquinas

IN BOOK II of The Republic, Plato has his mentor, Socrates, explore with his students what it means to act in a morally responsible way.

In dialogue, Socrates alludes to an ancient Greek tale, "The Ring of Gyges." The wearer of the ring was rendered invisible, though he still could affect the material world as do visible bodies. In Socrates' version, Gyges, a shepherd, possesses the ring and uses it without fear of reprisal. Indeed, he uses it to kill the king of Lydia, to rape the queen and then to empty the kingdom's treasury.

I thought of Plato's cautionary tale while reading of the latest round of belated admissions of sexual misconduct by members of the Roman Catholic clergy.

Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee resigned May 25 after acknowledging that he had settled a sexual misconduct case brought against him by former seminarian Paul Marcoux. Mr. Marcoux was paid $450,000 of diocesan funds to settle the case. The size of the settlement and its confidential nature have led many Catholics in Milwaukee to label it "hush money." Each week brings new revelations about Catholic clergy who have operated under the assumption that they were possessors of the ring of Gyges.

The tale of Gyges is not simply an apt one for understanding the behavior of sexual predators who hid their abuses in the power and prestige of the priesthood. It is an equally appropriate way to understand the inaction of the American church's hierarchy - its bishops who have, over the years, aided and abetted these crimes.

Responsibility ought to walk hand in hand with power and prestige. In the case of some of the American bishops, it appears to have been lagging several paces behind. Woodrow Wilson once suggested that men who rise to lofty positions either grow or swell. We are waiting to see some growth from many of the American bishops.

One of the great ironies in this unfolding tale of deception and moral blindness is that the church has emphasized, for about 700 years, that personal accountability and integrity are the rock-bottom foundations of an acceptable moral life.

Often this stress on moral responsibility has been aimed at those folks seated in the pews. Much of that rhetoric has been aimed at parishioners' sexual lives. It turns out that while they were making these moral pronouncements from the pulpit, too many of our American bishops were exercising all the ethical accountability of the owners of a hotel umbrella stand.

The silence of too many of the bishops becomes all the more ironic when we understand that Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century father of the church, has been standard reading in Catholic seminaries across America since the middle of the 18th century. Perhaps some of the bishops need a refresher course.

In his Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics , Thomas carefully outlines the elements of moral accountability. He suggests that we should hold someone morally responsible for his actions if that person intended to do wrong, knew it was wrong and could have done otherwise.

But Thomas also explains that any individual who knew, or had a duty to know, of the misconduct and could have done something about it is also morally responsible. Failing to act sometimes can be a grave sin, one that compounds the evil of the original act. The notion of playing musical chairs with predatory priests - moving pedophiles from parish to parish without any regard to the consequences - is a serious moral matter indeed.

What should Catholics of conscience, people who care about the welfare and goodness of the church, do about these matters?

First, they should demand that the American bishops come clean on how many credible accusations have been made and what has been done about each of these allegations.

Second, Catholics ought to insist that the bishops and their attorneys do away with the notion of confidential settlements in sexual misconduct cases involving diocesan priests. Confidential settlements make the bishops look duplicitous and self-serving.

Third, we should encourage the bishops to spend time and money on trying to get to the heart of why so many cases of priestly sexual misconduct involve pedophilia of small boys. Why is the priesthood sometimes an attractive life for those who suffer from this particular pathology?

Fourth, the bishops need to become better informed about what the most effective treatments are for this behavior. What are the recidivism rates for various kinds of treatment, and how can we structure the reporting of treatment so that the recidivism rates might be believed? (The bishops seem too often to take at face value the purported success rates of centers devoted to such treatment - unverified figures bandied about by the directors of these treatment facilities.)

Finally, we must encourage the bishops to show some moral courage. They need to begin to look less like Enron executives worried about damage control and more like men of conscience. They need to show us that they can be trusted.

We are waiting.

Stephen Vicchio teaches philosophy at the College of Notre Dame.