Supreme Court to Allow Sex-Abuse Suit Against Vatican

In its actions yesterday, the U. S. Supreme Court dealt some blows to the professional homophobe set. In addition to upholding Hastings Law School's policy barring the Christian Legal Society from university funding because of that group's anti-gay membership policy (more to come on this ruling in another post), the Court in a stunning move allowed a lower court decision permitting the Vatican to be sued to remain standing. Given the criminal conspiracy within the Roman Catholic Church that enabled and protected predator priests, the action is definitely correct. Nonetheless, the hissy fits that must be going on in Rome must be off the charts. As the trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger demonstrated, forcing a religious fraud to have to live by the rules of the courts as opposed to media spin games can be damaging. Herr Ratzinger must be beside himself. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post:

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In announcing which cases it would take during its next term, the Supreme Court said Monday that it would let stand a lower-court ruling allowing the Vatican to be sued over the church sex-abuse scandal, . . . . In declining to stop a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of conspiring with U.S. church officials to cover up sex abuse, the court took a rare step toward bringing the Holy See into a U.S. courtroom.

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The justices, without comment, declined the Vatican's appeal of a lower-court ruling that said it could be sued in a U.S. court on certain grounds. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by a man who said he was sexually abused as a teenager in 1965 by a priest in Portland, Ore. His attorneys said the church moved the priest among different assignments to cover up the abuse.

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[T]he Supreme Court allowed pretrial discovery in the case to go forward, and attorneys for the plaintiff said they would seek to subpoena church documents and call Vatican officials under oath.

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It's way past time that the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy was held accountable for actions that would have quickly landed others in jail and/or facing removal from office.