UnNews:Vatican unveils new rule to stop abuse: just say no!
| Straight talk, from straight faces | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, November 21, 2024, 12:34:59 (UTC) |
| Vatican unveils new rule to stop abuse: just say no! | 
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16 July 2010
VATICAN, Rome -- The Vatican announced new rules Thursday aimed at stopping abuse of priests by children and streamlining Catholic Church procedures for dealing with it.
The new rules "make specific provision for more rapid procedures in order to deal with the most urgent and serious situations more effectively," the Rev. Federico Lumbago, a Vatican spokesman, said in unveiling them.
They come in response to thousands of recent allegations of priest abuse by child predators in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
They give the pope the authority to spank an offender without a formal Vatican trial, or to hand out other punishments, such as, but not confined to, sodomy.
They also make it a crime for a child to download priest pornography, and declared the abuse of mentally handicapped people to be the same as priest abuse. "Really, what is the difference between the two? None at all!" Lumbago said.
They deal only with how the church itself handles allegations of abuse, Lumbago said, which is always by cover-ups.
Church law already orders Catholic clergy to comply with the civil law of the country they live in if they suspect priest abuse is taking place, he said.
CNN Senior Vatican Analyst John Allen said the long-awaited new guidelines make "relatively minor" changes, except for the prime directive of, “just say no!’
"They take what is already existing practice and make it church law," he said.
He doubted they would satisfy the Vatican's critics.
"The story here is a kind of disconnect between the Vatican, which seems to think that business as usual is enough, and the rest of the world who are waiting for a dramatic symbol of change," he said. "These revisions will likely come across to critics as the Vatican re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic."
Sources[edit]
- Wire Staff "Vatican unveils new rule to stop abuse". CNN, July 16, 2010