"I feel more confident we will have our day in court," said a survivor of childhood abuse by a Los Angeles archdiocesan priest. "The church will have to deal with this."
Recent disclosures are not a sign the episcopacy suddenly became aware of how utterly corrupt its culture had become. They are more a measure of how great the pressure from the outside has become.
NCR Today: I was left wondering about the priests I knew when I worked in the Pittsburgh Diocese. If there was any abuse of any kind at the time, I did not know about it.
Distinctly Catholic: An important conversation has begun about how the US bishops should address the problems the McCarrick episode reveals, including an unhealthy hierarchic and clerical culture.
Just Catholic: Fearing a bishop's power, no one wants to say anything. And it's not just clerics whose cries are muffled. It's lay employees and religious sisters who need their jobs.
NCR Today: Francis' harsh and dismissive words for his Chilean critics could portend a major stumbling block: an inability to face clergy sexual abuse and cover-up when it hits home.
