Nicholas Cafardi, who served on the USCCB's National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth and wrote a book, Before Dallas, about the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic church, reports on Ireland's scandal in the latest Commonweal. Cafardi finds plenty of similarities between the handling of abuse in Dublin, as detailed in the Murphy Report, and what was uncovered in the United States back in 2002. But the fallout has not been identical, and Cafardi suggests that the details are significant.

...there is one critical difference in the treatment bishops received on opposite sides of the Atlantic. In the Boston shipwreck, only one bishop resigned, Cardinal Bernard Law, and the notion that he has been punished seems dubious. Within months, he was in Rome, sheltered by friends, resident in the Apostolic Palace, and finally, in May 2004, appointed by Pope John Paul II to be archpriest and canon of the Basilica of St. Mary Majorwhere he still resides, in a grand apartment adjoining the Basilica, with a chauffeured Vatican limousine, living on income from the Basilicas endowment, and serving as a member of the powerful Congregation for Bishops, which recommends episcopal appointments. Hardly a penitential retirement, in other words. In contrast, in Ireland, four of the five bishops named in the Murphy Report have tendered their resignations. Only Bishop Drennan, currently of Galway, has notand he is under severe pressure to do so. (So far, Rome has accepted only one of the resignations.)What accounts for this difference? Why did the Irish bishops who gave solace to pedophile priests step down, while the American bishops who did the same went on happily with their episcopal careers? The answer, in a phrase, is fraternal correction.

Read the whole thing for his take on what's happened so far, and how we could act on what we've learned.