New Vatican rules: the good and the bad

The Vatican introduced new revisions to canon law on Thursday to deal with accusations of sexual abuse against its priests. The additions and modifications, which are strictly internal Church rules and do not affect civil or criminal law, will speed up the defrocking of priests, extend the statute of limitations on abuse cases from 10 to 20 years, will make the penalties for the abuse of mentally challenged adults with those of children and will make the possession and distribution of child pornography a “grave crime.”

The revisions also call for the inclusion of lay participants in Church trails of suspected abusers and clarifies the link between bishops and the Vatican when it comes to dealing with accusations sex abuse.

What follows are two interviews that shed different perspectives on Thursday’s announcement.

The first is with Robert Ventresca, an associate professor of history at the University of Western Ontario. He believes the inclusion of the laity in canonical trials is an historic and welcome step. Prof. Ventresca is now writing a biography of Pope Pius XII.

The second is with Christopher Bellitto, a professor of Church history at Kean University in New Jersey. Prof. Bellitto, the author of 101 Questions and Answers on Popes and the Papacy (Paulist Press 2008), believes the new document fell down on two main issues: oversight of bishops and including the issue of female ordination of women in the same document, a move he called “bizarre.”

Holy Post: What is the overall impact of this document?
Robert Ventresca: The document provides greater accountability, greater clarity and greater transparency — the things that have been demanded by Catholics. Many of these policies have been in place unofficially for several years but by enshrining them in law you are giving them much more power and gravitas.

HP: Why is it important that the laity will now be involved with Church trials of alleged abusers?
RV: This is remarkable because you now have the laity entering into the judicial branch of Church governance. This is an important historical move and certainly follows the direction [since Vatican II] for greater lay involvement in the life of the Church. What will the lay person bring that a cleric doesn’t? Is it because they’re parents? Certainly the scourge of clerical abuse is at least the product of a culture that has been exclusionary. So I think in that regard the involvement of the laity in this regard has to be seen as salutary precisely because lay people bring to the table different sensibilities and different understanding of the Church in the world.

HP: Bishops are usually considered independent. But the revisions also note that the bishops report to the Vatican’s doctrinal office on sexual abuse issues. Why was that significant?
RV: I don’t what it will look like in practice but it does seem the Vatican is centralizing its control over bishops when it comes to sex abuse cases.

HP: How much should we expect from these new rules?
RV: One of the things I thought immediately was it’s fine that the letter of the law will be clearer and more forceful. But for a long time the Church has declared these crimes to be the most serious offences and yet we had a clerical abuse scandal. The letter of the law is often not enough; you also have to look at the culture. That’s why I think bringing in lay people is so important. This could bring a new spirit in which we move beyond the closed inner circle of the Church.

HP: Why raise the issue of female ordination in this document? It seems out of place.
RV: I don’t think of this as a document on one thing, but more of a list of things the Vatican has been working on. I don’t think they were linking the two things.

****************

Holy Post: What was missing from this document?
Christopher Bellitto: The complete lack of oversight of bishops who moved abusers around. While the crime of pedophilia turns our stomachs, the crime and sin of transferring pedophiles without punishing them must be laid fully on bishops’ doorsteps. And the fact that’s not there is sitting in people’s craws. Nixon learned long ago it’s not the crime but the cover-up that will get you.

HP: But Benedict is sending bishops to various countries where there have been problems. The Archbishop of Toronto will be going to Ireland, for example.
CB: But what we need is a formal system where bishops will review cases of fellow bishops who are alleged to move pedophiles around. Sending bishops to Ireland is a good step but that it has to be made a regular practice and not an ad hoc practice.

HP: Why did the Vatican add the prohibition against female ordination in a document about sex abuse?
CB: It’s completely bizarre. It leaves the impression that the Church is equating sex abuse of children with female ordination. But it fits this papacy which has continually had a tin ear. The issue of the female ordination is only a reaffirmation of what has existed so why put it in this document? By reading it alone it looks like they’re equating abuse and female priests. The moderate good of this document is going to be steamrolled by the linkage of the sex abuse crisis with the reaffirmation that women can’t be priests. Did nobody sit down at the Vatican and say, “The only thing anyone is going to focus on is the reaffirmation of the ban on female priests and link it to child abuse.”