Pope Francis moved the Catholic Church massively forward Thursday, promulgating new clerical law requiring the reporting of abuse. But it’s closer to the first step than the final one in addressing this crisis.
The pontiff has required all church staff (priests and nuns) to report — with whistleblower protections — what they believe to be sexual abuse and/or coverups of abuse to their superiors. Every diocese must have procedures in place to handle such claims confidentially. Special rules kick in if the accused is a bishop or other religious superior.
Francis’ new church law doesn’t mandate reporting to secular authorities, but does require obedience to relevant local laws, so the pope has indeed ordered American priests (for example) to tell the police.
It’s hard to write detailed universal requirements for a church that exists both in nations that make freedom of religion a fundamental legal right and ones where the government aims to make the church into another arm of the state or suppress it entirely. Not to mention the cultural differences between, say, the United States and India.
Happily, the pope’s directive seems to leave room for the US bishops to adopt the local reforms they want — which would give lay members a prominent role in handling accusations against bishops and other high church officials.
Francis is right to address the basics of how to handle reported abuse, but the Catholic Church — lay and clerical — still faces a grueling debate about how so much abuse went on so long. Two decades in, many Catholic liberals and conservatives are still mainly blaming each other.
You can’t completely end a crisis until you truly understand how it happened.