“‘The abuser was evil but the Church didn't know’ — isn't that dodging responsibility?”

🔥The question: “If the same kind of cover-up repeated itself in region after region, isn't that a problem in the institution rather than an individual crime?”

🕯️First, the admission: There was institutional responsibility: victims were disbelieved, the Church's good name was put first, and secrecy, clericalism, and weak oversight let the abuse happen again. The decision to move an abuser somewhere else created the risk of new victims, and those who made that decision have to answer for what followed.

🛡️The Church's answer: Punishing the individual abuser is not enough. What leaders did and failed to do, the documents and the reporting chain, and the structures of power all have to be investigated. Mandatory-reporting duties and local law must be obeyed; experts independent of the institution's interests, along with lay people, women, and survivors, must be part of it; and cover-up and retaliation have to be treated as wrongs in their own right.

🧐If they press further: “Are you saying the secrecy of confession makes reporting impossible?” — The seal of the sacrament of Penance is kept without exception, but it is not a license to hide reports, documents, or eyewitness knowledge received outside the sacrament. Safeguarding procedures must not lean on confession at all; they have to guarantee safe external reporting and cooperation with investigators.

✨In one sentence: “Repeated cover-ups are not only individual deviance but the responsibility of the institution and its leaders, and even the decision-making has to be investigated independently.”