It’s going global – not in the sense that child abuse is prevalent across the world in the Catholic Church (we knew that already), but in the sense that the Vatican and other parts of the Church hierarchy can use their international status to move criminal priests from one country to another to avoid prosecution or discovery:
INSKEEP: When priest sex abuse becomes an international issue, when people are being moved from country to country, whose job is it to police it?
Mr. EGERTON: It’s a really great question. International flight is the ultimate challenge for law enforcement. And it often becomes unclear whose job it is. Police, we have found, though, in many cases, haven’t availed themselves of all that they could to pursue these folks.
INSKEEP: Yo! u mean haven’t taken advantage of extradition treaties and that sort o f thing?
Mr. EGERTON: Right. In some cases, they’ve failed to pursue extradition. In other cases where extradition treaties aren’t present, they haven’t made other inquiries to see if something else can be arranged. In some cases, they haven’t even gotten to the point of doing anything but filing a warrant in their home country and just filing it away and walking off.
INSKEEP: Were there American priests who were shipped overseas?
Mr. EGERTON: Absolutely. Frequently, what we’ve seen are priests who worked for a long time in America but remained citizens of another country. They came here and, when trouble arose, there was an easy escape hatch, and that was to go back to their native lands.
INSKEEP: You’ve already told us of one case where someone outside the United States got in trouble and was shipped to the United States for a while.
Mr. EGERTON: That’s right. It…
INSKEEP: Did that happen more than once?
Mr. EGE! RTON: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, we found some folks who are still here, still here.
I’ve long believed that this scandal goes right to the heart of the current hierarchy in Rome. Good for the Dallas Morning News for pursuing this. (Hat tip: Glenn.)
EMAIL OF THE DAY: “People out there are learning the exact wrong lesson from the shortfalls of intelligence about Iraq. The failure of our intelligence organizations to correctly assess the status of Saddam’s WMD programs is actually a powerful argument IN FAVOR of preemptive – or even preventive – national security doctrine.
Sure, it’s fair to hold the CIA accountable for this “intelligence failure,” and I don’t argue that the intel community could have done better. But think about it this way: The question of Iraqi WMD was one of the most critical national security issues for the United States for over a decade, and the US, our allies, and the UN directed vast intelligence collection and analysis resources against it. Regardless of what particular mistakes were made, the degree to which the CIA came up short reveals a larger truth: This type of intelligence problem is fundamentally impossible to solve with the precision necessary to support a security policy based on traditional “imminent threat” criteria. Whether Saddam’s WMD capabilties were overestimated or underestimated is a peripheral issue. What is essential is that we didn’t – and probably couldn’t – know for sure what those capabilities were.
Contrary to the assertions of many who opposed war in Iraq, this epistemological limitation does not argue for the abandonment of a preemptive doctrine. In fact, it argues for yet greater urgency in the preventive (yes, preventive) elimination of regimes that have the potential to use WMD or supply them to other actors. The definitive intelligence issue for this doctrine is not what specific weapons programs, terrorist links, or ill intentions a certain state might possess, but rather the nature of that state. That is a question that is readily answerable and is therefore a more valid guide to ethical decision-making on issues of war and peace.
Just war doctrine has long rejected this line of reasoning, as it could provide pretexts for endless wars of agression. But times have changed. The civilized world can no longer safely permit governments like Saddam’s to exist. The precise status of WMD programs (especially bio and chem) in countries like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are practically insurmountable intelligence problems. The solution lies not in trying to improve the intelligence, but in getting rid of the problems.” More feedback on the Letters Page.
The Dish 