“There are Bishops in Germany that are encouraging anyone with a complaint go to the civil authorities. Implying that they should not trust the church authorities.”
in true abuse cases,(i.e. if children were involved) this should have been done.
Alas, most of the cases are gay priests feeling up teenaged boys, and the boys don’t want to be exposed to the public as gay, or as making accusations against that nice popular priest...
I believe you make a very good and reasonable case for avoiding publicity on behalf of both parties in some circumstances providing that the Church authorities take reasonable measures to prevent such behavior in the future.
Significantly, the revolt of the Bishops telling the people to call the police came after the church had set up a hot-line in Germany to report misconduct by the clergy. This hot-line received 2,900 calls in a couple of days and was yet another attempt to cover up the reality of the situation making for even a worse mess than they already had.
Their action was obviously out of frustration at the ineptness of the Vatican and the special circumstances in Germany, which is not a Catholic country and the natural distrust of all religions in most of Europe. Germans can volunteer to pay a religious tax by indicating their choice of affiliation or none at all and have the government withhold that amount and give it to the specified church organization.
So many people have now changed their affiliation or declared none at all that a very good idea can be obtained as to how much the German church has been hurt by this fetish of secrecy, bumbling ineptitude and obvious indifference to the victims of religious predators. It is my belief that from a practical point of view they could not put up with further denials, obfuscation and frankly horrendous PR disasters from Vatican spokesmen and others.
It is noteworthy that several days later the Vatican has now followed the lead of the Germans. As I noted in another post at last some common sense has seeped into the Vatican, albeit by getting out of the way and abdicating any pretence of leadership.