The New Reform of the Penal Law of the Catholic Church: Resuscitating a Forgotten Pastoral Instrument?

The new reform of the penal law of the Catholic Church, amending Book VI of the Code of Canon Law of the Latin Church, as well as other recent canon law norms, aims at making sure that local bishops can punish more straightforwardly and with less discretion those conducts which are considered as most harmful for the church as a community. The drafters of this reform have made it clear that, in the past, many believed that penal laws should only exceptionally be applied. Now, however, this area of canon law should actually be considered one more instrument of pastoral governance. Although the Vatican has underlined that the new Book VI will be useful in the fight against the crime of sex abuse by clergy, this reform partly codifies norms and punitive mechanisms which had been progressively introduced and had already been in place, sometimes for decades.