AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Susie O’Brien
From:Herald Sun
November 13, 2012

WHY is the Catholic Church continuing to protect and forgive paedophiles?

That is the only way to interpret the church’s desire to allow allegations of abuse made in the confessional to be exempt from mandatory reporting to police. Bowing to public pressure, the church has agreed with mandatory reporting of child abuse by priests and church officials. That is long overdue.

We need an urgent change to state laws to ensure mandatory reporting includes priests and other religious figures. At present, it’s confined just to doctors, nurses, teachers and police.

But mandatory reporting by priests is absolutely meaningless unless claims made in the confessional are included.

You would think the Catholic Church wouldn’t want to absolve paedophiles, but to hand them over to authorities. And yet the church wants to allow confessions by child abusers, or confessions…