UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture
By Phil Lawler Feb 12, 2016
This week I read dozens of headlines about a new Vatican document that allegedly instructed bishops not to report sex-abuse complaints to the local police. For example:
* Catholic Church Tells Bishops They Are Not Obliged to Disclose Child Sex Abuse: Report (Time)
* New Catholic bishops told they don’t have to report sexual abuse to police (Newsweek)
Catholic bishops not obliged to report clerical child abuse, Vatican says (The Guardian)
* Vatican: Bishops not required to report abuse to police ( UPI)
Here’s what was wrong about those stories:
* There was no new document.
* Neither the “Vatican” nor the “Catholic Church” had taken any new stand on the topic.
* The controversial statement reflected in the headlines was the personal opinion of a French monsignor.
How did the headlines get so far from the truth? Oddly, every one of the reports cited above gave proper credit to the original source for the story: an item posted on the Crux site on February 7 by the respected Vatican journalist John Allen. But Allen had the story right. Somehow dozens of other journalists read his report and dashed off in the wrong direction.
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