POCATELLO (ID)
Idaho State Journal
March 3, 2019
By Leonard Hitchcock
Last week, over a hundred Catholic bishops gathered in Rome for a conference that addressed the problem of child sexual abuse by priests.
The church, and the general public, have known about this problem since the 1980s, when complaints began to surface in the United States. The Vatican chose, at first, to regard it as a localized phenomenon.
Then, over the ensuing decades, thousands of reports of abuse came in from Canada, Ireland and Australia, then from the continental European countries, and finally from Asia, Africa and South America. The church has finally been forced to acknowledge that the problem is a global one.
The Vatican has made some efforts to address the problem, but its reluctance to take measures to punish the higher-ranking church officials who have participated in the cover-up of the crimes of the priesthood has been conspicuous. It has acted, it seems, only when public outrage has left it no choice.
No doubt the conference was a positive step, though critics of the church pointed to a problematic, age-old conviction of the Vatican, viz. that it, and it alone, has the responsibility of disciplining priests, even when they commit civil crimes that the secular justice system is willing, and able, to deal with.
After four days of discussion, the Pope closed the event with a proposal for a new set of corrective measures. Most observers were disappointed at his failure to suggest concrete and decisive steps to solve the problem.
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