The worst kind of scandal is what brings the church itself into disrepute, because that undermines the faith of the community of believers. Indeed, canon law not only specifies ecclesiastical punishment for clerics who cause scandal by their misbehavior but also it allows a penalty to be suspended “whenever the offender cannot observe it without danger of grave scandal or infamy.”

In brief, the reason the word “scandal” appears again and again in abuse documents from the Pennsylvania dioceses—and from wherever else in the Catholic world such documents have come to light—is that bishops and their minions have understood themselves to have theological and canonical warrant for keeping the sins of the priests out of public view.

The irony, of course, is that all this avoidance of scandal has resulted in the greatest scandal in the Catholic Church since the Reformation, if not of all time.
So if the culture Pope Francis says he wants is to be created, what the church teaches about scandal needs to be changed.