No it has not.
The bishops in the United States have adopted an "everyone is a molester" policy.
Every volunteer who may be in the vicinity of children must have criminal background checks, every employee regardless of who they may contact must have a criminal background check. Every employee and volunteer must attend "Virtus" training programs. And the children... God save us, the children have their innocence destroyed in a classroom setting so um, their innocence won't be destroyed. It's a nightmare, everyone from parish priest to kindergartner has to pretty much walk around constantly on guard that everyone around them is a child molester.
The program came out in 2004, my wife and I won't let our children be involved, we weighed the risks and decided the cure was worse than the disease. It's not so much zero tolerance as it's zero sense.
Every volunteer who may be in the vicinity of children must have criminal background checks, every employee regardless of who they may contact must have a criminal background check. Every employee and volunteer must attend "Virtus" training programs. And the children... God save us, the children have their innocence destroyed in a classroom setting so um, their innocence won't be destroyed. It's a nightmare, everyone from parish priest to kindergartner has to pretty much walk around constantly on guard that everyone around them is a child molester.
That's pretty much the way it is everywhere.
Try being a nursery worker in a church, or a coach, or a camp councilor.
Anyone who works with kids, and even anyone who doesn't, lives under this shadow. No one is safe from the accusation.
I came to the same conclusion, though perhaps for different reasons. "Zero tolerance policies" have been implemented in public schools and quickly degenerated into stark nonsense: kids suspended for having an aspirin on them, or making a drawing a gun, or giving a girl a peck on the cheek.
I decided that I did not want to volunteer in an atmosphere of suspicion, and would not give up my civil and canon-law rights to the presumption of innocence. It was the right decision: the name of someone in my parish was confused with that of a person who did have a criminal background, and he was suspended for several weeks until the mistake was cleared up. But the interim was hell for him.
Eventually, the diocese decided that choir members are really no different from ordinary congregants, and did not have to go through this stuff if they did not work with children. So I went back to volunteering.
The whole thing's a bit overboard, IMO, rather like the Transportation Security Administration, but no one can justly accuse the Church of inaction on this issue.