More important, in both the sex scandals in the United States in 2002 and in the spy scandals in Poland in 2007, the press—regardless of its motives—is doing what the bishops and the Holy See ought to have been doing—that is, ensuring that men unfit to be priests or bishops cease to function as such. By accepting his resignation, the Vatican has conceded that Wielgus' past activities make him unsuitable to be archbishop-metropolitan of Warsaw.

Now, either the Vatican knew about Wielgus' past when it appointed him, as Wielgus says and as the Vatican's statement in December strongly suggests, or else it did not, as Re now maintains. If the former, then the Vatican's investigation of Wielgus prior to the appointment was grossly negligent, failing to discover information that was readily available in Poland. If the latter, as seems much more likely, then the Holy See exercised very poor judgment in making the appointment in the first place and even worse judgment in attempting to ram it through even after the truth about Wielgus became public. It stood by Wielgus while it knew he was lying to the faithful by denying the allegations. Many faithful Catholics looking at this situation will think that our bishops, rather than their critics, are the ones doing the real harm to the Church here.

For many years I have been involved each summer in the Tertio Millennio Seminar on Catholic social doctrine in Cracow, Poland. This summer there were long and agonizing conversations with various Poles about information regarding priests and prelates who may have crossed the line from innocent cooperation to culpable collaboration with the communists. Poland has set up an Institute of National Memory that is going through miles and miles of documentation from the communist years. This is not an anti-Church project. There are devout Catholics among the scholars involved who only want the truth to be known. They had warned that the Wielgus appointment to Warsaw would be a great mistake.

But they weren't listened to by the Holy See. Why not?

Let me tell you a similar story about this country. Some years back, it became clear that a man I will call Bishop Doe was to be advanced to a leading see in the United States. A group of prominent orthodox Catholic laymen, and at least one priest, journeyed at their own expense to Rome to warn the Vatican not to make this move. According to my personal interviews with two men who were on that trip, they warned a Vatican official in detail about private sexual behavior of Bishop Doe that badly compromised him, and could lead to grave scandal were this to come out in the press (not to mention how a bishop with those kinds of compulsions might administer his new diocese).