I was always told that as child abuse wasn't mentioned in the bible as a bad thing (in Leviticus it's almost compulsory) therefore, from a catholic point of view, it wasn't a big deal. So protecting such a thing wouldn't be a stretch, esepcially in the light of other events around the world.

And catholicism has always had an illusion of itself as being above temporal law and their priests were exempted from the laws of the land where they worked (this was the cause of the fatal schism between Henry II & Thomas a Beckett).

It's interesting that the church still felt it could ignore the law of the land and get away with it.

keep to the Fen Causeway