WHEN a crisis hits a vast institution it can seem reasonable to say that the task of handling the crisis falls mainly to the institution itself. It must regroup and survive, or else fail and collapse. But things change when there is evidence of criminal activity and of efforts to hide it. At that point it becomes urgent for everybody, including good people inside the institution, to let daylight in and expose wrongdoing without hesitation to outside authorities.

All that might seem obvious, but for some of those responsible for handling the abuse scandal now afflicting the Roman Catholic church, especially in Europe, the penny has yet to drop. Instead of fully accepting the primacy of secular law, the Vatican still gives the impression that the problem is mainly one of internal housecleaning.

Ears of tin

Last month the church unveiled a tightening of its own rules for dealing with abusers that fell far short of what the world demands. A “statute of limitations” for child-abuse was extended by ten years; people aged up to 38 can now file charges against a priest, under church law, for harm suffered when they were minors. Too bad if a victim feels emboldened to speak out at the age of 39. A faster procedure for defrocking priests—one that risks giving the innocent little opportunity for self-defence—was introduced. At the same time, with stunning insensitivity, it was declared that “attempting to ordain a woman” as a priest would be treated as a serious offence.

To put it kindly, whoever crafted those statements must be out of touch with the reality that is now catching up with the quasi-theocratic regimes (in other words, situations where religion is immune from state power, and has power of its own) which persist across Europe. In Ireland a point of no return was reached in November when a report found police collusion in covering up clerical misdeeds. Irish citizens, including pious ones, will never again treat the church as untouchable. In June Belgium's authorities virtually dissolved an internal church inquiry into sex abuse by seizing files and detaining the country's bishops for several hours. In Germany cosy ties between religious and political authorities have been shaken by news of abuse at prestigious Catholic schools and monasteries. In Italy the church still enjoys a sort of immunity, for cultural reasons, but Italians will surely one day insist that their religion should be answerable to the law of the land. That principle is especially important at a time when Western democracies are struggling to work out what place, if any, they can accord to subcultures that wish to regulate their family affairs under the laws of Islam, or some other minority faith.

There are psychological and sociological reasons why the Vatican has been slow to accept these hard realities. In most parts of Europe its clergy is ageing and diminishing in number—to a much greater extent than is its flock (see article). The temptation for a declining church to hang on to old privileges is strong. But it hardly helps win souls. Senior clerics, such as Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, and Rino Fisichella, recently charged with “re-evangelising” Europe, have signalled that they understand the need for the church to change. But they have run into a wall of internal opposition.

It is no coincidence that the scandals have usually been worst where the church claims the greatest legal power; nor that the church has looked healthiest when it focuses on converts not canon law. If only the Vatican's masters could read the signs of the times more clearly, they might see that they have an interest in full accountability—to secular courts and elected governments. Instead of fiddling about with their own arcane procedures, they should enlist lay authorities to help them clean up and obey the law, just like everybody else.