Archive for September 25th, 2012
Responding to clericalism and sex abuse / U.S. Catholic
Posted by Voice of the Faithful in Catholic Bishops, church reform, Clergy, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Vatican, Voice of the Faithful on September 25, 2012
Principle: “In the church all are one in Christ; there is no Greek or Roman, no Jew or Gentile, no male or female”—and no hierarchy of privilege or status or honor conferred by ministerial office or rank alone. All baptized believers immersed in the sacramental life and apostolic works of the Catholic community are to be respected as equal inheritors of the ancient traditions and full participants in the work of redemption, a work accomplished by and through Christ alone. The church, catholic and apostolic, is a graced community of sinners and pilgrims, and those who receive holy orders must never set themselves apart from or above the faithful; to the contrary, the clergy must be subject, like the laity, to the correction and exhortations of all the faithful.
The sexual abuse of children and young adults by a tiny minority of Catholic priests is itself a terrible stain on the institutional church—but the repeated failure of the bishops and other priests to report and remove the perpetrators has magnified and deepened, beyond immediate repair, the erosion of trust and the crisis of faith within the Catholic community. “Responding to clericalism and sex abuse,” by Scott Appleby, U.S. Catholic magazine