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
accountability, catholic bishop accountability, catholic bishops, catholic church, Catholic Church reform, catholic hierarchy, catholic priests, child sex abuse, clergy, clergy sexual abuse, clericalism, priests, religion, sex abuse, sexual abuse scandal, U.S. bishops, vatican, voice of the faithful
This entry was posted on September 25, 2012, 12:47 PM and is filed under Catholic Bishops, church reform, Clergy, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Vatican, Voice of the Faithful. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0.
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A lay movement for governance reform in the Roman Catholic Church, responding to the clergy sexual abuse scandal and supporting survivors.
Voice of the Faithful
Voice of the Faithful ® 
#1 by Bill Casey on September 25, 2012 - 5:10 PM
Scott Appleby lays out the pathology that is eating away at our Church life in unambiguous clarity. What keeps people in the pews, who sustain and enable clericalism, from demanding a conversion of mind and heart from the clergy?
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