Child Abuse Inside the Catholic Church and the Anavoidable Need for a New Canonical Criminal Procedural Law
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14422/ee.v97.i383.y2022.011Keywords:
abuse, children, lack of sufficient understanding, vulnerable people, canonical criminal proceedings, canonical criminal lawAbstract
It is not possible a pastoral action relating to child abuse issues that does not consider the legal dimension of the problem or postpones the legal mechanisms that human beings have used for the resolution of conflicts and controversies for centuries; legal proceedings have been one of these mechanisms, and are always instrumental in relation to the legal rights they serve. Bearing in mind that the damage of both legal matters and penalisation mechanisms has been one of the causes that has led to the child abuse crisis inside the Catholic Church, the author claims that it is not possible to face this issue without the Law in general and without penalisation mechanisms specifically (i.e. without criminal and procedural law). A more harmonic, simplified and technically more rigorous criminal and procedural regulatory framework is necessary. This new procedural framework would allow dealing specifically with crimes relating to child abuse. As a member of the Commission created by the Spanish Bishops Conference for such purpose, the author explains the main aspects of the «draft regulation on child sexual abuse and those who generally lack sufficient understanding».
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