Acta Apostolicae Sedis - Commentarium Officiale690

As canon 455 makes clear, the recognitio of the Holy See is required for

any validly adopted decision of an Episcopal Conference which is to have

binding force on all its members but it is not required for guidelines as such,

nor is it required for the particular norms of individual Dioceses. Within the

framework of ordinary episcopal jurisdiction, a Bishop is always free to enact

laws or adopt guidelines for his own Diocese without any need to refer to the

Holy See.

While the Irish Bishops did engage in consultations with the Congrega-

tion for the Clergy about the contents of the Framework Document, the Irish

Bishops' Conference did not take the canonical vote required by canon 455

§ 2 and never sought the recognitio of the Holy See for it. While the Con-

gregation for the Clergy may contribute to the discussion leading to the

formulation of complementary legislation, it is the Congregation for Bishops

which is the competent dicastery for granting the recognitio to general decrees

of the Episcopal Conferences in its territory. Since the Irish Bishops did not

choose to seek recognitio for the Framework Document, the Holy See cannot be

criticized for failing to grant what was never requested in the first place.

However, the lack of recognitio would not of itself prevent the application

of the Framework Document in individual Dioceses. Despite the fact that the

Framework Document was not an official publication of the Conference as

such, each individual Bishop was free to adopt it as particular law in his

Diocese and apply its guidelines, provided these were not contrary to canon

law. In the above-mentioned letter, Bishop Smith states: "All dioceses have

accepted this document and set in place a framework for handling future allega-

tions of child sexual abuse by priests." The firm and determined approach

adopted by the Irish Bishops was respected by the Holy See and made it

unnecessary for it to intervene further.

In the light of the findings of the Cloyne Report, the basic difficulty with

regard to child protection in that Diocese seems to have arisen not from the

lack of recognitio for the guidelines of the Framework Document but from the

fact that, while the Diocese claimed to follow the guidelines, in reality it

did not.

As the Cloyne Report notes, the child protection guidelines of the Church

in Ireland were revised and further improved in subsequent years, leading to

the publication of Our Children, Our Church in 2005 and Safeguarding

Children - Standards and Guidance Document for the Catholic Church in

Ireland in 2009 (4.42-4.62). Unfortunately, the introduction of new