Belgian authorities have sunk to a new low when it comes to investigating allegations of clerical sexual abuse.

The Brussels prosecutor’s office admitted that a crypt was searched during a police search of the Mechelen cathedral near Brussels on Thursday.

Prosecutor’s spokeswoman Estelle Arpigny refused however to confirm complaints that the tombs of two cardinals had been tampered with.

“All I can say is that a vault was opened” during the investigation into new paedophilia claims, she told AFP.

According to the article, the authorities were apparently searching for hidden documentation of sexual misconduct; during this search, attendees at a bishops’ meeting on a different topic were subjected to a raid and temporary house arrest.

The Vatican is indignant. I am too. Since when is it common, or even logical, to hide documents in coffins? Just how likely was there to be any evidence actually present there, and how can an unannounced raid on a bishops’ meeting prevent the destruction of said evidence when it was in an entirely different location?

The only description of this activity that I find accurate is “state-sponsored vandalism.” There was no need to desecrate the tombs, and as Andy Mason notes, such an activity wouldn’t have even been tolerated if it the religious leaders in question weren’t Catholic. This wasn’t about police procedure; it was nothing less than a government-sanctioned hate activity.

A few years back, a co-worker (somewhat sheepishly) asked me to speak with her preteen daughter who’d become afraid of Catholic priests thanks to all of the activity concerning abuse allegations. I did so, pointing out that there’s nothing in Catholic doctrine that says children shouldn’t tell their parents if a priest says or does something that leaves them uncomfortable; and that almost all of the abusive activity in question happened at least a decade ago. In many cases it was much longer ago than that.

In other words, the current “scandal” is nothing more than media hype, and government raids and investigations are nothing more than witch hunts. The damage has already been done. In a lot of cases, the perpetrators are dead from old age. There’s nothing to be gained except appeasement of the increasing, and mostly artificially-created, anti-Catholic public sentiment.