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You must have missed the part about NO charges being filed and No prosecutor pressing a case, and victims agreeing/asking that the offense be kept quiet.

Helping someone keep quiet a serious misdeed that COULD be prosecuted but is NOT being prosecuted is no crime. While I am morally appalled at the bishops who made many serious mistakes - who knew the facts, I am not appalled at the pope, who did not know the gory details.

People in very high places are often purposefully NOT told sordid details so that they can stay above the fray. Apparently everyone thinks that the pope should have ordered the man sent to jail.

Blame whomever else you want to, but the pope is blameless here.

>You must have missed the part about NO charges being filed >and No prosecutor pressing a case, and victims agreeing/asking that the offense be kept quiet.

There doesn't have to be a prosecution for someone to be an accessory after the fact. In fact, if you think about it, the facts as you presented them .... No charges being filed, No prosecutor pressing the case, the victims agreeing/asking the offense be kept quiet (of course the victim of a child sex abuse doesn't have the legal standing to decline prosecution. The state is the plaintiff in criminal cases, it's quite common for the child victim to feel that the adult they "love" is being unfairly prosecuted) is circumstancial evidence that the Church officials' crime -- accessory after the fact-- actually occurred. If you can shut everyone up till after the statute of limitations has expired you've cheated the justice system. This is the reason that aiding and abetting a felony is itself a crime.

>Helping someone keep quiet a serious misdeed that COULD be >prosecuted but is NOT being prosecuted is no crime.

If you're an accessory after the fact, it doesn't matter if they principal felon is ever convicted, arrested or heard from again (Dr. Samuel Mudd was thrown in prison, perhaps unfairly, even though John Wilkes Boothe was never arrested). In this case, helping someone keep quiet a serious misdeed (that is a felony) that could be prosecuted and is not, is still a crime.

Massachussetts makes an exception for family members (it's the part of the statute that follows my ...), there is not an employer exception. The Church officials knew wayward priests sexually abused children, and they knew the priests had committed felonies (good luck arguing the Church officials didn't know that sodomzing a child is not a felony).

The Church officials didn't have a duty to report the abuse but it have a duty NOT to assist the priests escape justice... moving them out of town or paying off the victims is a criminal act. As a legal matter, whether the Pope himself knew is irrelevant, he's a foreign sovereign and is not answerable to a US court.

That's kind of my question throughout all this. From a legal standpoint, should the RCC, for example Cardinal Law specifically, be held criminally liable for not reporting numerous instances of molestation etc? What would the situation be if say, a elementary school principal knew that his teachers were molesting kids and he did nothing to report it but rather shifted them to other schools instead? Wouldn't the police be knocking on his door pretty quick?

And a side question from a non-Catholic - why do they call him "Bernard Cardinal Law," or as with the late "John Cardinal O'Connor"? Why is the title stuck in the middle? And is that just for cardinals or other levels too? Thanks. :)