Seriously, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't detraction the sin of exposure of someone else's serious sins "without sufficient cause"?
Sex abusers have an extremely high rate of recidivism, such that U.S. law requires the registration of those convicted of this crime even after they have served their prison sentence; and clinicians have observed for 40 years that pedophilia is virtually incurable. (Google "sex abuse incurable" to get a range of opinions on this: a range, by the way, but none of them optimistic.)
This being the case, even if this sin has been confessed and forgiven, and the abuser has done penance, he should be permanently prevented from having any contact with children and youth. If the Bishop put this priest in a parish, the faithful who know about the man's background have not just a right, but a duty, to make it known.
Protecting parishioners and their families from a man with a history of sex abuse is "sufficient cause" to blow the whistle.
I agree with you there, but I don't agree with using his position as a journalist to publicize the priest's past to large numbers of people who will never have occasion to interact with the priest. Did the bishop, who is responsible for assigning the priest his duties, know? Did Dreher attempt to communicate with the bishop or the priest? Did Dreher even consider trying to work on the parish and diocesan level before going national with the news?
If you comitted adultery in the past and I knew of it, do I have sufficient cause to warn your neighbors that you are an adulterer and that they should protect their husbands from you?
As to pedophilia, having sex with teenage boys (the crime in focus here) is not pedophilia. It is homosexuality, and really, is not particularly different than the crimes covered by marriage of minors laws and statutory rape laws. Lets get off the whole pedophilia schtick.
Protecting parishioners and their families from a man with a history of sex abuse is "sufficient cause" to blow the whistle.
Is a singular instance a "history"?
If a man comes home early once and has sex with the teenage babysitter, does he need to be permanently seperated from all contact with teenage girls?
In any case, all this is a bunch of nonsensical speculation. As Rod notes about the Priest in question:
"He had been suspended by his diocese in Pennsylvania after formal abuse accusations had been leveled against him. The priest came back to his hometown, Dallas, and got other work -- but was helping out on the weekends in this particular parish. It turned out that the pastor knew all about his past, had concluded that he had been falsely accused, and put him into active ministry in the parish -- without telling the parish, or even his bishop. Now, this priest might well be innocent -- nothing has been proved against him"
http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/crunchycon/2006/10/orthodoxy-and-me.html
So with no proof whatsoever of anything other than the Priest - Fr. Christopher Clay of the Diocese of Scranton - having supposedly been suspended pending his case being ajudicated (this is the new policy that came out of the 2002 Dallas meeting - make an accusation and the Priest is sent packing without proof or ajudication needed), Rod outed him and the up till now secret accusations by publishing unproven allegations about him in a local newspaper, and simultaneously slandering the rest of the lower clergy as a "herd of moral geldings" (another crime in Canon Law is to encourage animus against the clergy). "Can. 1373 A person who publicly incites his or her subjects to hatred or animosity against the Apostolic See or the Ordinary because of some act of ecclesiastical authority or ministry, or who provokes the subjects to disobedience against them, is to be punished by interdict or other just penalties."
The actual history of the Fr. Christopher Clay case is here:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2004_07_12/2004_07_02_Adams_ExBishopPriest.htm
Apparently, the Police found no cause to charge him, and his alleged victim declined to sue. Maybe because he was innocent! A priest friend of my family is in this conundrum right now. He was suspended by Bishop Wuerl in Pittsburgh 4 years ago now, and has been forced to sit in suspended animation at an old seminary since then, with no progress being made in his "case" (which apparently centers around him having taken pictures of kids flexing their muscles poolside at a trip he had organized 20 years ago). If this is the level of some of these acusations, they are really quite flimsy.