Fact: The Catholic Church is the only institution on the planet where if you are an employee merely accused of wrongdoing from decades ago, your name may end up on a diocesan web site somewhere for the entire world to see as if you were a convicted child molester. Think about that.

Clergy are required to report abuse heard in confession or face up to three years in prison. Laws requiring clergy in Victoria [Australia] to report child abuse to authorities – even if it is revealed under the seal of confession – will come into effect today.

As late as last year, bishops had to admit that the definition of “credible” was, in fact, not precisely defined at all; it might mean simply that “something could have happened.” In the wake of such a “credible” accusation, in swift succession, the priest must leave his residence immediately, is prohibited from wearing clerical garb, and is barred from public ministry.

"When civil law establishes an obligation to report on the part of someone informed about the facts," Dalla Torre said, "the reduction of the pontifical secret and the detail on the limits of the ‘office secret’ permit a ready fulfillment of the requirements of the law, thereby favoring full collaboration with civil authorities and preventing illegitimate incursions of the civil authority into the canonical sphere."

“The abusive clergy were in many ways adolescents themselves, and most of their offenses consisted of fumbling efforts at intimacy” . . . provided of course that the privacy of victims is protected . . . If we allow disgust to keep us from hearing such stories, we are protecting no one but ourselves.