“The Vatican” has proclaimed its regret for the decades of abuse in Pennsylvania of 1,000 or more children by hundreds of the Vatican’s priests.

The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible. Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith.

The Church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur[.]

On the other hand, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General has pointed out the skill with which this perfidy was executed.

The cover-up was sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and the cover-up.  These documents, from the dioceses’ own “Secret Archives,” formed the backbone of this investigation.

Because the men who run the Catholic Church chose not to conduct their own investigation.  It’s a reminder of the atrocity in Boston two decades ago where the Cardinal there, far from nailing his child-abusing priests, simply relocated them to fresh hunting grounds.  It’s a reminder of the abuses inflicted on Argentine children only recently uncovered—officially, that is.

Talk is cheap, men of the Vatican, and rended garments easily replaced.  What are you actually going to do?