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	Papal Apology Is Too Little, Too Late Sydney Morning Herald March 23, 2010 http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/papal-apology-is-too-little-too-late-20100322-qr3k.html IN THE past two decades Catholic bishops in several countries have grown used to making public apologies for the sexual abuse of children by priests. On Saturday, however, the task of apologising moved up the church's hierarchy to Pope Benedict XVI, in a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics. The letter was prompted by the revelations in Justice Sean Ryan's 2600-page report, released in May last year, which detailed the conduct of 800 abusers in more than 200 institutions during a 35-year period. The scale of the abuse, and the extent to which it was concealed by bishops and superiors of religious orders, justifies descriptions of it as systematic rather than the actions of a few individuals. The Pope did not deny this. His letter castigated Ireland's bishops for their complicity in the events, and called on them to co-operate with civil authorities. But the apology fell short of what victims' advocates had wanted, as similar utterances have so often done before. To many, the Pope's letter read as one more statement in which church authorities acknowledged what could no longer credibly be denied, while still refusing to accept full responsibility. It contains nothing about the Vatican's own complicity in concealing abuse, and although it foreshadows a Vatican investigation of several Irish dioceses it does not indicate what penalties, if any, might be imposed on bishops who failed in their duties. In all countries accepting the rule of law, secular institutions beset by similar scandals would stand down those accused of misconduct or concealing misconduct, at least until the completion of inquiries and any legal process. That does not, however, seem to be the way the Vatican envisages its ''apostolic visitation'' - the euphemism for an investigation - being carried out. To victims of clerical sexual abuse in Australia, the US and Britain, all of this will be depressingly familiar. The church's response to their plight has typically been one of damage control, and the Pope's letter, sincere though its apology no doubt is, is in the same category. It contains no admission that the church's own practices may have been fundamentally at fault, yet the abuse crisis continues to grow. It is no longer chiefly an Anglophone phenomenon, as Vatican officials have previously suggested, and has spread to the Pope's home turf, Germany, as well as to Austria and the Netherlands. Nor is it confined to the First World, as has been claimed: the Vatican is investigating the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order, for some of its members' activities in Latin America. The Pope's cautiously phrased pastoral letter, however, suggests the church still sets limits to self-scrutiny.
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