BishopAccountability.org
	Too Small a Step on Scandal Edmonton Journal July 17, 2010 http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/small+step+scandal/3289587/story.html On Thursday, the Catholic Church released an updated guide to its canonical laws governing, among other things, the treatment of priests who sexually abuse children. The release was an opportunity for the Vatican to make a statement, to draw a line under past scandals, acknowledge wrongs and move on with the business of making sure that children under its care are never again abused and that abusers are never again shuffled from parish to parish, allowed to escape punishment for their crimes. Like so many others in this decades-long scandal, it was an opportunity missed. Yes, the Vatican has made it easier to try priests accused of abusing children. But it did not made it mandatory for Church officials to report those crimes to police nor will it hold bishops responsible for crimes committed by priests under their watch. More bizarrely, the Church also chose Thursday to include ordaining women as priests on a list of grave offences, which also includes pedophilia and heresy. That Church officials later clarified that they didn't necessarily believe the crimes were of the same gravity was a case of too little, too late. The damage was done. Once again the Vatican has undermined its efforts to leave the matter behind -- by including what looked like a not-so-subtle dig at their critics, in this case the ones who believe that allowing women to be ordained or letting priests marry might go some way toward fixing an institutional culture that has produced so many allegations of sexual abuse. The Church's response is particularly galling in light of everything we now know -- from lawsuits, criminal trials and public inquiries -- of its own role in keeping those allegations secret for so long. For the Vatican to now appear to be doing anything less than everything possible to prevent future abuse is a betrayal of past victims. But it is also a betrayal of the millions of Catholics who have given their lives to the Church and trusted in its teachings to guide them along a moral path. For better or for worse, lay people in every part of the world, including hundreds of thousands of them in this city, look to the Church every day to help them navigate the complex business of being human. They marry in Catholic churches, they send their kids to Catholic schools. They take comfort at all times in a faith that preaches humility, forgiveness and love. The cardinals in the Vatican do not own that faith. But in their continued refusal to fully accept the role the Church played in perpetuating and covering up the sexual abuse of children, they damage it for others. Thursday's announcement, which many have dismissed as mere tweaking, could be an important step in that direction. But more clearly needs to be done, beginning with an acceptance by the Church hierarchy that they may not have all the answers.
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