BishopAccountability.org
	Catholic Church Must Name Abusive Priests, Critic Insists CNN July 15, 2010 http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/15/catholic-church-must-name-abusive-priests-critic-insists/ New Vatican new rules aimed at stopping the abuse of children by priests do not go far enough, child-safety campaigners said Thursday. "The pope had a chance to do something really decisive that would affect the situation worldwide," said Anne Barrett Doyle, but instead issued rules that are the equivalent of "bringing a child's sand shovel to an avalanche." The new regulations give the pope the authority to defrock a priest without a formal Vatican trial, or to hand out other punishments. They also make it a crime for a priest to download child pornography, and declare the abuse of mentally handicapped people to be as bad as child abuse. But Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability, wants the Vatican to do much more, including ending "secretive tribunals" of priests accused of abuse. "The church must release lists of credibly accused priests," she said. Naming suspected abusers "serves a public safety function," she said, and is "not only reasonable, it's absolutely crucial." It would help victims to have abusive priests named even if they are dead, she said. "I know a family that was utterly destroyed by the abuse of four siblings" who were all molested by the same priest, she said. "It tore apart a devout Catholic family. Some of them are not speaking to each other," she said. "It would be of enormous help to them for the bishops just to say, 'We know there are allegations against him.'"The new rules come in response to thousands of recent allegations of child abuse by priests in the United States, Europe and Latin America. They deal only with how the church itself handles allegations of abuse, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said. Church law already orders Catholic clergy to comply with the civil law of the country they live in if they suspect child abuse is taking place, he said. CNN Senior Vatican Analyst John Allen said the long-awaited new guidelines make "relatively minor" changes. "They take what is already existing practice and make it church law," he said. He doubted they would satisfy the Vatican's critics. "The story here is a kind of disconnect between the Vatican, which seems to think that business as usual is enough, and the rest of the world who are waiting for a dramatic symbol of change," he said. "These revisions will likely come across to critics as the Vatican re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.