Of course they are. Surely the Vatican had nothing to do with covering up child rape, right? After everything that has come out about the decades of abuse, why would anyone believe what the Vatican has to say now? It's a little too convenient to dismiss it as a misunderstanding.
In a new round of damage control, the Vatican insisted Wednesday that a 1997 letter warning Irish bishops against reporting priests suspected of sex abuse to police had been "deeply misunderstood."
The Associated Press on Tuesday reported the contents of the letter, in which the Vatican's top diplomat in Ireland told bishops that their policy of mandatory reporting such cases to police "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."
