Buffalo News
April 19, 2010
http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/04/18/1023422/vatican-acts-on-abuse.html
The Vatican took a big step last week toward formulating a sensible and proactive policy regarding the sexual abuse of minors by some priests. It didn't go far enough, as critics quickly observed, but it was a potentially important development nonetheless.
The policy, which the Vatican says is a clarification and not a change, makes it clear that bishops and clerics should report such crimes to police if they are required to by law. To that extent, the policy matches the one adopted by American bishops in 2002, following a flood of reports of sexual abuse.
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| Pope Benedict XVI greets the faithful this month during a general audience in St. Peter\'s Square at the Vatican. |
But the Vatican policy falls short of the American standard by failing to call for "zero tolerance" for priests who abuse children. That doesn't mean the Vatican is open to a certain amount of tolerance for the sexual abuse of children, but by failing to say that, it has opened the door to what is painfully legitimate criticism, given the grotesque revelations of the past several weeks and years.
The Vatican, it is fair to say, does not move quickly. It needs to. The new guidelines are helpful, but the church is undergoing a crisis that could overwhelm its hierarchy. It has to get out in front, and Catholics and non-Catholics alike need to see that it is there.
The church needs to craft specific language whose goal is to protect children from the outset and to ensure that any abuse that does occur is more difficult to conceal. It needs a global zero-tolerance policy, not just an American one, and it needs to review why so many cases occurred to begin with. There can be no policy or tradition that stands in the way of ensuring the safety of children entrusted even partially to the care of the church.
What is more, such policies should exist as official church law, not as a guideline, which is what the policy announced last week is. There need to be enforcement provisions that spell out what will occur upon an infraction, though there should be no dispute that clerics of any religion who abuse children should be defrocked and imprisoned.
For now, though, there is a new guideline that stands to improve matters. If the church should have learned anything over the past several years, it is that millions of people are watching to see how it performs in this matter. That's as it should be. The innocence of children and the reputation of the church are at stake.
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