It's been a year since the Dallas meeting, and the furor about abuse seems to have disappeared off the front pages and out of the television evening news. It would appear that some bishops have decided that the problem has been solved, and they are back to business as usual. In many dioceses, priests are still making the decisions about whether brother priests should be charged to the independent review board and reported to the civil authorities. If there is one lesson that has been learned from the scandals of the last 20 years it is that few priests--especially priests on the chancery staff--can make negative decisions about friends or classmates.
