UNITED STATES
Religion in the News
by Andrew Walsh
As the Catholic clerical sexual abuse scandal grinds into its fourth weary decade, the costs tote up: thousands of abused victims, about 700 predator priests removed from ministry, scores convicted of molestation of minors and other crimes, billions in legal settlements and costs, devastating grand jury reports about hierarchical collusion and cover up, and an unfathomable sum of heartbreak and shattered faith.
How goes the struggle to reform? Not so well, at least according to prosecutors in Kansas City and Philadelphia. In 2011, for the first time in American history, criminal indictments were pressed against high church officials for failing to report suspected child abuse and child endangerment. In both cases, the charges deal with administrative decisions made by church leaders in the recent past, not old cases dating decades back. Both trials are expected to begin this spring.
Why, despite the largest, longest scandal in the history of religion in America, are some Catholic bishops still struggling to evade or escape legal requirements that they automatically call the cops whenever clergy are accused of sexual misconduct?
One plausible answer is that old habits die hard. For the last 1,800 years, the Catholic Church has pretty much consistently argued that its bishops have the exclusive right to discipline their clergy, a standard that entered Roman law as early as 412, when the Emperor Theodosius II agreed that only bishops—and not imperial courts—should prosecute and punish clergy accused of crimes.
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