Where was the (canon) law?: McCarrick and Pennsylvania

We're back in the heart of darkness, back in the midst of the abuse scandal.

First, we hear about the credible accusations against the former Cardinal McCarrick. That same day, we learn of the settlements made by dioceses in New Jersey over misconduct with adults. Shortly thereafter, bloggers and religion journalists announce that all this and much, much more was an open secret.

So that was bad enough, and led toward some sort of reckoning, especially coming as it all did at the same time as the Honduras, Chile, India, and African #metoo moments in the Church.

And then the Pennsylvania grand jury report was released.

Others have been and continue to comment well on all of this. I doubt I have anything of any originality or interest to add, save one thing. One question keeps coming to mind: Where was the canon law system? Where were the ecclesiastical courts and forms of oversight?

Don't we have in the Church a system that guarantees justice for all, laity as well as clergy? Then how come, time after time, did abusive priests end up with a lifetime system of benefits, silence from the Church about their crimes, and, it seems, a fair amount of protection from accountability to the civil courts or their victims? Canon law seems to have protected the clerics quite nicely. What of the rest of the Church?

I suspect the law is far better than the facts of the last 70 years would suggest. I suspect that post-conciliar anti-nominianism (a repugnance to law) that became quite common in the Church opened the door to this situation, to ineffective application of canon law. There have been, after all, a cavalcade of theological, liturgical, and other abuses over the course of the decades since the Council. At least on the front of canon law, the refusal of the Church to police herself, to consistently apply her own law has contributed to and exacerbated the sex abuse crisis, as well as every other form of crisis that we've been confronting.

Law can be abused by the powerful to oppress, it is true. But the failure to enforce the law can also be a means of oppression. Equal treatment before the law is the last safeguard of the weak against the strong. If it goes away,we get exactly the sort of behavior that's evidenced in the grand jury report, in McCarrick's career, and in all too many Catholic institutions of higher learning.

There's been a serious shortage of ease of reporting canonical crimes or violations of the Church's law by those in the hierarchy; a serious shortage of investigative follow through; and a serious failure to consistently, fairly, and publicly apply that law. Imagine how much different the Church's present situation would be if there'd been a full, rigorous, fair use of the Church's canonical remedies for the many and varied ways in which her law had been broken since the Council!

So among the many other questions and investigations going on right now, I would hope there would be someone asking what happened to the Church's law, and its application.