New Catholic guidelines that state bishops do not always have to
report child abuse by priests to the police are evidence of a complacent
Church sliding back to its old ways, writes Malachi O'Doherty.
There we were thinking that the Catholic Church had learnt a lesson. It
had been humiliated by the disclosure of the awesome scale of its
cover-up of child abuse by priests and had learnt the fundamental
priority of child protection.