NEW YORK (NY)
Patheos blog
December 17, 2018
By Rick Snedeker.
There’s good news and bad regarding the Catholic Church’s continuing clergy sex-abuse scandal.
The good news is that American bishops are beginning, independent of papal direction, to publicly release lists of priests “credibly accused” of sexual abuse crimes, particularly against children.
The bad news is that it’s not as simple as it sounds.
As the Catholic Church faces a wave of federal and state attorney general investigations into its handling of sex abuse, bishops around the country have struggled with how to react. Some have locked down defensively. Others are waiting on guidance from the Vatican, which instructed American bishops last month to wait on taking any collective action until the new year.
But dozens of bishops have decided to take action by releasing lists of the priests in their dioceses who were credibly accused of abuse. And they are being released at an unprecedented pace.
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