UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Kieran Tapsell | Jul. 28, 2017
COMMENTARY
NCR’s editorial, “On Abuse: church has changed but not enough,” rightly identifies the all-male clerical culture as a critical factor in the sex abuse scandal, but it fails to point to the failure of Pope Francis to change parts of canon law that embody that culture.
Pope Francis may feel restrained by theology from having women priests. But Canons 478 and 1420 require vicars general, episcopal and judicial vicars also to be priests. They therefore can’t be women except with a dispensation given by the men in Rome. This can be changed with the stroke of a pen.
A more serious example of clericalism is canon law’s imposition of the pontifical secret on all allegations and information about child sexual abuse by clerics. The only exception that would allow reporting to the civil authorities was given to the United States in 2002 and to the rest of the world in 2010, and it was limited to where there are applicable civil reporting laws. Very few jurisdictions have comprehensive reporting laws. In the United States, only half the states have clergy as mandatory reporters.
Pope Francis’ attempts to hold bishops accountable have meant very little because his capacity to do so is limited by the Code of Canon Law. The three bishops he forced to resign — Archbishop John Nienstedt and his auxiliary, Bishop Lee Piché, of St. Paul-Minneapolis, and Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri — had breached canon law in force in the United States since 2002 that required them to comply with civil reporting laws.
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