UNITED STATES
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

In 2002, on a sunny fall day in Rome, I asked a canon lawyer why the Vatican derailed a 1989 request by American bishops for a free hand to defrock sex abusers. Only the pope held that power — if bishops had more flexibility to dismiss abusers it might have preempted scandals to come.

The priest told me that US diocesan tribunals “violated grandly – terribly – the annulments of marriage.” What, I asked, did marriage annulments have to do with pedophilia?

“Laxity on annulments,” he fumed, showed an “antinomian mentality” – against moral law. Too many annulments let people freely remarry, weakening church law. Thus, Rome would give no ground on sex abusers, the logic went.

An earthquake has happened since then. Pope Benedict improved the procedure for laicizing sex abusers. But the Vatican moved so slowly, failing to confront complicit bishops, that…