On January 30, the dicastery announced that it would specifically investigate and judge cases involving individuals "who habitually have an imperfect use of reason."

This announcement delineates the jurisdiction of the doctrinal office, specifying that cases involving vulnerable adults with temporary limitations on their ability to understand, will or resist an offence should be referred to other Vatican departments.

This move seeks to address longstanding questions regarding the treatment of vulnerable adults within Church procedures, particularly in comparison to minors under the age of 18.

The discussion surrounding the protection of vulnerable adults from clerical sexual abuse has evolved over the past 15 years, with Church documents progressively acknowledging this group's need for safeguarding.

However, ambiguity regarding the scope of this protection has prompted debates, especially concerning adults in positions of dependency such as those under the spiritual guidance of clergy.

The recent clarification from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith underscores a more precise approach to defining its jurisdiction, limiting its investigative responsibilities to minors and those with a habitual impairment in reasoning.

The Vatican indicates that other cases of abuse involving vulnerable adults fall under the purview of various other dicasteries, depending on the nature of the alleged perpetrator and the victim's specific vulnerabilities.

This development represents the Vatican's ongoing efforts to address and mitigate clerical sexual abuse, highlighting a structured and differentiated approach to various victim categories.

It acknowledges the complexity of vulnerability and the need for specialised attention across different ecclesiastical bodies to ensure justice and protection for all Church community members.

Historically, the Church's legal framework has evolved to address the abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by clergy.

John Paul II's 2001 document Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela initially tasked the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with overseeing cases of minor abuse.

This was expanded by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 to include developmentally disabled adults over 18.

Pope Francis further refined these definitions in his 2019 document Vos Estis Lux Mundi which distinguished minors and vulnerable persons based on their capacity to understand or resist abuse.

Source

• OSV

The definitive rules of Vos Estis, which take effect in May, add to the original document on several specific points:

• Along with complaints of abuse by clerics and religious, the policies are also applied to complaints against lay people who lead "international associations of the faithful" that are recognized by the Vatican. The procedures could be invoked even after these leaders have left office.
• The complaints to be investigated include not only sexual acts with minors, but also those with vulnerable adults. Whereas the earlier version spoke of a "vulnerable person," the new rules speak of "a person who habitually has an imperfect use of reason, or with a vulnerable adult."
• Church investigators are not allowed to require someone who reports abuse to enter into a non-disclosure agreement. In the final version of Vos Estis, this protection is extended not only to people who report that they were abused, but also to witnesses.
• The final version demands "the legitimate protection of the good name and privacy of all persons involved."

The Vos Estis norms require ever diocese to have a "public, stable, and easily accessible" process for the reporting of abuse complaints, and provide for the handling of complaints against bishops as well as priests.

Questions remain

However, the revised norms leave a number of crucial questions unanswered. For instance:

• While lay leaders of Catholic organizations may be subject to canonical penalties, it is not clear how those penalties could be imposed (except insofar as they could be stripped of office), since the Holy See has no direct control over the lives of lay Catholics.
• The definition of a "vulnerable" adult remains open to a broad range of interpretations.
• The order to protect the reputation of everyone involved is obviously in tension with the requirement to conduct public investigations and encourage full disclosure.

To put the problem in more general terms, the definitive version of Vos Estis fails to resolve the basic problem with the original document: the enforcement of the norms remains entirely subject to the discretion of the bishops who interpret them.

Yet it is precisely the discretion of the bishops that has been called into question in recent years; the lay faithful have lost confidence in the willingness of their bishops—and even of the Holy See—to address the abuse scandal forthrightly.

Revelations about clerical abuse and cover-ups continue to emerge, despite promises of full disclosure, despite new policies and procedures.

Nearly three years ago, when the first version of Vos Estis was promulgated, I expressed these misgivings:

However, the new policy does not define the disciplinary action that would be taken against bishops who are found guilty of misconduct (including, under the new rules, the misconduct involved in covering up abuse).

The new policies require an investigation, conducted under the auspices of the Holy See, with a report eventually being made to the relevant Vatican dicastery. But the papal document does not indicate what sort of punishments might be imposed on offenders.

Nor do the new norms address the lack of transparency that has characterized—and could continue to characterize—the Vatican's investigations of episcopal misconduct.

While the papal document requires the Vatican to investigate charges and take appropriate action, there is no provision for any public explanation of the disciplinary action.

On those crucial points, the final version of Vos Estis changes nothing.

• Philip F. Lawler is the editor of Catholic World News (CWN), the first English-language Catholic news service operating on the internet, which he founded in 1995.
• First published by Catholic Culture. Republished with permission.