Well, no, Jack, the facts are wrong. Church courts don't do criminal trials. There can be a church trial to determine whether a priest should be removed from the priesthood ("defrocked"), and people got all huffy when the Catholic Church failed to defrock offender priests. The church considers ordination to be forever, and was not in the practice of "defrocking" unless there was a flaw in the ordination. The usual practice was to have a trial to remove "faculties" - the permission a priest must have to function as a priest, without denying the fact that the man had been ordained.

Rome eventually gave into to pressure and did begin to do trials to remove priests from the priesthood. I don't think this was a good thing to do because it muddied the waters, simply to satisfy those who did not understand the significance of removal of faculties.

-Joe-