CathNews
July 7, 2010
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=22287
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is expected to release in the coming days a set of changes to the Church's rules for disciplining abusive priests.
Vatican sources say that the revisions are largely a matter of consolidating existing practice, rather than a dramatic new approach to how sex abuse cases are handled, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
The revisions affect only the internal ecclesiastical status of an accused priest, the report adds.
The church's current law in sex abuse cases was laid out in a 2001 document from Pope John Paul II, titled Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela. Sources say the new revisions will codify exceptions to that document, secured by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in February 2003.
Those exceptions, known as "special faculties", generally had the effect of streamlining church procedures for weeding abusers out of the priesthood.
The revision is also purpoted to extend the statute of limitations in canon law, known as prescription, for bringing a charge of sexual abuse of a minor from ten years from the victim's eighteenth birthday to twenty.
For the first time, the revisions also identify child pornography as a "grave offense" subject to the doctrinal congregation.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is also said to be working on a separate document, styled more as "guidance" rather than binding law, which will address how bishops and bishops' conferences around the world can better coordinate the various directives on sexual abuse issued by national conferences of bishops.
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