Vatican requires bishops 'to cover up child sex abuse' in absence of reporting laws, expert says

[trotsky]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-02/vatican-law-requires-catholic-bishops-cover-up-abuse-expert-says/10057532

A canon law specialist says Catholic bishops in Australia are still obliged to not report child sexual abuse to authorities in jurisdictions without mandatory reporting laws.

A confidential instruction from the pope in 1922 directed bishops to treat canonical crimes such as "obscene acts with animals", "solicitation of sex during confession", and "gravely sinful offences perpetrated against children" with the utmost secrecy.

"And that secrecy has been confirmed, continued by every pope since, including the current one, Pope Francis," said Kieran Tapsell, an expert witness on a 2017 royal commission panel on canon law.

...The instruction itself, published in the official acts of the Holy See, was "a legislative document with the force of the law", and remains in place in 2018.

The article is a month old, but the subject is quite relevant, particularly when there are those seeking to dismiss the abuse and rape in the RCC as no different than incidents of abuse in other organizations. That is a patently false claim, and articles such as this prove it.

[MineralMan]

1. Deliberate concealment of crimes is deliberate.

Such are instructions like those. And the victims suffer in silence, because their suffering will be officially denied. How can this church dictate moral behavior to those not part of its hierarchy? That is the very definition of hypocrisy, something Jesus supposedly railed against many times in the scriptures the RCC supposedly follows.

The Pope's slip is showing...

[trotsky]

2. Again we need to recall that the RCC places its canon law above secular law.

From their religious perspective, they aren't covering up the crime at all. They believe they are dealing with it fully, following their 'superior' law. Which just so happens to provide no justice for the victims at all.

[MineralMan]

3. Yes. Worse, the Right thinks that's just fine.

In fact, some want the Bible to be the only law.

[Voltaire2]

4. The RCC is a criminal organization.