UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Thomas P. Doyle | Apr. 22, 2015
POTIPHAR’S WIFE: THE VATICAN’S SECRET AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
By Kieran Tapsell
Published by ATF Press, $40
The legal system of the Roman Catholic church is probably the longest-running in history. Canon law, the commonly used name for this system, has been accorded near magical status by some of its practitioners, who are firmly convinced it has an answer to every problem facing the institutional church.
The true believers have claimed that the clergy sex abuse debacle could have been avoided had the church only used its own canonical system. Foremost among them has been Cardinal Raymond Burke, formerly head of the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s highest court. In 2012, he addressed a canon law convention in Kenya and said that the church has a “carefully articulated process by which to investigate accusations of sex abuse,” and that the ongoing problem of clergy sex abuse was because the discipline of canon law was not followed.
Burke’s assertion and those of others making similar claims are far removed from the reality of canon law’s role in the church’s abysmal failure to deal with the epidemic of sexual misbehavior.
On the other side of the reality divide, bishops who actually tried to deal with priest-perpetrators according to the church’s rules found themselves more times than not stymied and stonewalled by a confusing and contradictory array of canonical regulations.
I have been a canonist long enough to know that canon law never had a chance. My belief is based on the fact that canon law is a legal system in service to a monarchy. By its very nature, the primary goal is to protect the monarchs. There is no separation of powers in the Catholic church, hence no checks and balances.
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