When The Vatican Hierarchy Sees Gray

Thomas P Barnett notes how certainty and moral responsibility can become less important to the Catholic hierarchy: when it involves covering up the rape and sexual abuse of teens and kids. My civil marriage? It's black and white. Their decades-long criminal conspiracy to protect child abuse?

The lawyer sprang his big question: You could have prevented someone from hurting people and you decided not to. Why? The witness was Edward M. Egan, then the Roman Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. The question was about a priest who had been accused of sexually molesting children.

“I didn’t make a decision one way or the other,” said Bishop Egan, whom the lawyer suggested had failed to act quickly against the cleric. “I kept working on it until I resolved the decision.”

They make Bill Clinton look honest.