oh, NOW I get it!

By ( articles ) | Apr 12, 2010

The Vatican has for the first time made it clear that bishops and other high-ranking clergy should report clerical sex abuse to police.

That's the lede in an AP account of the Vatican's public summary of Church guidelines for handling sex-abuse complaints. The message, as delivered by AP, is clear: the Vatican has finally instructed Church leaders to inform civil authorities about abuse complaints.

But wait. The next sentence sends quite a different message:

The Vatican has insisted that this has long been the Catholic Church's policy.

And the guidelines that were made public today have been in place since 2001. So this isn't a new policy at all; the story is several years old.

The Vatican made these guidelines public for the benefit of the public. The people with a "need to know"-- the bishops and other Church leaders who were expected to implement the policies—were already acquainted with them.

So an accurate lede for the AP story would run like this:

The Vatican has for the first time made it clear even to AP reporters that bishops and other high-ranking clergy should report clerical sex abuse to police.