It's about time someone said it, and it turns out to be the New York Times, though not as direct as this:

The Roman Catholic church preaches absolution of sins, the redemption and restoration of the soul from any sin that's confessed, and the absolute sanctity of the confessional. It opposes mandatory sentencing as inflexible and unjust. It teaches that ordination vows are for life and can only be removed if you, the ordained, resign them or if the church excommunicates you.

So is it no wonder the church is waffling over what to do about priests who abuse children? If they confessed it as sin, the church can't tell police. If it opposes mandatory sentencing, how can it adopt a "one-strike-and-you're-out" policy of its own? How can it discard priests when it's spent years teaching those same priests no one should be discarded? How can it fail to forgive and accept ministry from lifelong priests who seek forgiveness?

This is why I'm glad I'm not the pope (OK, it's one reason out of thousands of reasons). No one condones what abusive priests have done, but these calls for the Church to suddenly become a prosecutorial organization are flatly misguided. Ain't gonna happen. That leaves a big and open question -- what will?

A man in New Jersey is convicted of killing a child in 1982, sentenced to 18 years in prison, and released after 10 for good behavior (as most states do and all judges know will happen). Ten years later, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the police start putting flyers around his neighborhood warning that he's engaged in such dangerous activities as helping people fix flat tires and shopping at strange and mysterious cult shrines known as "malls."

"Megan's Law," which requires community notification of sex offenders, doesn't even apply to this guy, who could have been a bad guy in the past but has by all accounts been clean for ten years. No, the police just decided to do this on their own. Maybe the INS didn't have enough muslims for them to interview.