In the wake of the sex-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, bishops agreed to institute new disciplinary and reporting standard as well as a follow-up audit in order to determine how well the various dioceses were implementing the changes. Now, a second round of audits has been delayed - and a lot of people are criticizing the decision.

The Detroit News reports:

A member of the National Review Board — the lay watchdog panel the bishops created to monitor the church’s response to the abuse crisis — warned Wednesday that the delay could undermine the abuse policy, while a victims’ group said it was “extremely troubled” by the decision. ... Robert Bennett, a Washington attorney and review board member, said that “delay is a way that you can kill things. ... While I believe that the overwhelming number of bishops want to go forward with the audits, I am concerned that there are a handful of bishops who are going to use this delay to undermine the work of the Office of Child and Youth Protection and the board,” he said.

The bishops have said that they want a delay in order to have more discussion about the first round of audits - and by itself, that isn't entirely unreasonable. Perhaps not enough time was originally scheduled for the discussions at first. Bennett is right, however, the delays are a way that things can get killed - it's certainly something that has happened often enough in many different contexts. The bishops could probably address people's concerns by setting a firm date for new audits - would that really be so difficult?

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• Roman Catholicism
• Catholicism & Homosexuality
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