Ethics

Vatican Issues Pointless Rules on Molestation

By Ed Brayton

The Vatican keeps telling us that they've really, really changed and aren't making the same mistakes they've made in the past about priests molesting children. As usual, they're lying. They've announced entirely meaningless new rules on how to deal with it:

The Vatican issued a new set of norms Thursday to respond to the worldwide clerical abuse scandal, cracking down on priests who rape and molest minors and the mentally disabled.

The norms extend from 10 to 20 years the statute of limitations on priestly abuse and also codify for the first time that possessing or distributing child pornography is a canonical crime.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on July 19, 2010 (boomark / email).