"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.