U.S. Bishops Still Stonewall on Sex Abuse
“Who will guard the guardians?,” asks David Gibson at the Wall Street Journal. A decade has passed since the American Catholic Church’s hierarchy adopted the “Dallas Charter,” in which the bishops established a “one-strike” policy for abusive clergy, pledged to report abuse to civil authorities, and petitioned the Vatican to make it easier for American bishops to defrock priests. “But throughout it all,” writes Gibson, “the bishops exempted themselves from accountability—even though records showed that feckless inaction by many bishops, or even deliberate malfeasance by some, had allowed abusers to claim so many victims.”