KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
Dec 20, 2019
By Michael Sean Winters
Pope Francis’ decisions to remove the pontifical secret in clergy sex abuse cases, as well as raising the age for what constitutes child pornography, enact long-sought reforms. The decisions also did something else: They further disproved the dire and depressing verdicts rendered by many pundits on last February’s Vatican summit to address the issue.
A few weeks after that summit brought together the presidents of all the world’s episcopal conferences to address the scandal, all manner of voices, left and right, denounced the event as a failure or, worse, a sham.
Here at NCR, Thomas Doyle complained: The Vatican summit produced no decisive, action-oriented results, just more platitudes and promises. I consider this a positive because it should remove any doubt about whether the Vatican and the hierarchy have the ability or the will to take the radical steps essential to fixing the problem.
Doyle went on to say the only really good thing to come from the summit was the gathering of victims from around the world who held protests outside the summit meeting.
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