https://www.catholicsforrenewal.org/old_pages/documents/CanonLawOnChildAbuseThruTheAges.pdf CANON LAW ON CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE THROUGH THE AGES Kieran Tapsell1 In 2014 two senior members of the Marist and Christian Brothers in Australia told Justice McLellan, the Chair of the Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission that in the 1980s the brothers would not have regarded touching a student’s genitals as a crime but only a “moral failure”. 2 McLellan asked Br Shanahan. Q. Can you explain how the Orders would have brought themselves intellectually to that position, describing it only as a moral failure and not a criminal offence? How would they have arrived at that position? A. No, I can't explain it.3 This paper is an attempt to explain it: how bishops, priests and religious all over the world came to regard the sexual abuse of children, not as crimes punishable by the State, but as moral failures that should be dealt with by treatment, and by dismissal from the priesthood or religious life ...