It is very difficult to summarize 2,000 years of history without some anachronism creeping in through a generalization. From the time of Constantine and for many centuries afterwards, the Church was the State, bishops were judges, and canon law as a separate discipline to civil law did not start to emerge until the 12th century. The critical point came in the 12th century, when Innocent III decreed that the Church should not be involved with punishments that “drew blood”. That’s when we start to see papal and council decrees requiring clergy guilty of serious crimes, including “sodomia”, to be handed over to the civil authorities. One can understand Francis’s reluctance to change dogma and practice that seems to be firmly grounded in Church tradition, but on the issue of child sexual abuse, the tradition was all in favor of handing over to the civil authorities, and only changed 100 years ago. That’s what makes his refusal to reinstate the Church’s tradition so strange.