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Last fall, the Archdiocese of Boston released an ambitious plan designed to stem the decline it has experienced—in priests, Mass attendance, and treasure—since the 2002 wave of sexual-abuse scandals.
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who’s guarding the guards? It’s a question that exasperated members of a credibility-challenged organization have long asked about their leaders. How can we trust that the people who got us into a bad situation can get...
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The New York Times isn’t fair. In its all-hands-on-deck drive to implicate the pope in diocesan cover-ups of abusive priests, the Times has relied on a steady stream of documents unearthed or supplied by Jeff Anderson, the nation’s most aggressive...
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Eight years ago, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua asked me to join the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s sexual-abuse review board, which he was putting together to help him determine the credibility of allegations against priests. His invitation provided an...
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From the beginning, armchair social-scientists have floated any number of explanations for the Catholic Church’s sexual-abuse crisis. Conservatives blamed gay men. Liberals blamed celibacy. And everyone blamed the bishops.
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St. Pius X, in his encyclical Vehementer (1902), wrote: “By its very nature the church is a society of unequals; it is composed of two categories of persons: the pastors and the flocks.
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Pope Benedict's resignation shouldn't have surprised us as much as it did. As an institutionalist who believes in the Roman Catholic Church as the carrier of truth in a sinful world, he would worry a great deal about the impact of his own...
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"The church is not the pope, and the pope is not the church,” theologian Joseph Komonchak reminds us (see “Benedict’s Act of Humility”). Amen to that.
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The last pope to resign did so more than seven hundred years ago, which is a long time even by church standards.
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History & Mystery: John C. Cavadini reviews the second volume of Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth
Ratzinger at Vatican II, by John Wilkins
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On February 11, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would step down at the end of the month. His reasons? Age and infirmity. His doctors have advised him not to leave Europe. But perhaps stress contributed to his decision. These are difficult times...
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Grown-Up Men
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For a while, it seemed as if the Philadelphia Archdiocese had escaped relatively unscathed from the sexual-abuse scandals that devastated the Boston Archdiocese and many others. To be sure, there had been private lawsuits, and the Philadelphia...
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In February, three Philadelphia priests were indicted for sexual abuse, and their former vicar for clergy was charged with child endangerment.
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John Wilson, Mary C. Boys, Peter Jeffery, Richard R. Gaillardetz, William L. Portier
[Editor's note: William L. Portier's and Richard R. Gaillardetz's are the final in a special series of stories we are posting as the cardinals gather for the conclave. All of the previous articles in this series appear below.]
William L...
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In winning election as Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio defied the papal pundits, even though they should have seen him coming. His rise marks the decisive shift within Roman Catholicism toward Latin America and the developing world. In...
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Anyone who followed media coverage of the papal conclave that elected the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, couldn’t help noticing that the same breathless questions were raised again and again by commentators assessing the future...
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The release later this month of a much-anticipated survey quantifying a half-century of clergy sexual abuse of minors is sure to be another blow to American Catholics, even as it serves as a necessary purgative for a lingering crisis that surfaced...
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I hate this subject. I have hated it since 1988, when, in the springtime of my own faith, I learned that a priest in my hometown parish had abused altar boys there. I have hated it since 2002, when the abuse question exploded in the U.S.
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On April 12, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops published “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” its latest statement decrying alleged governmental attacks on religious freedom.
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In our 2005 series of articles titled “What Next?”, Commonweal asked several writers to look at the challenges the then newly elected Benedict XVI was likely to face.
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What do the Roman Catholic Church and the American political system have in common? Both are divided into factions that neither trust nor understand each other, and both confront a crisis of governance.
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Several Orthodox friends have asked what I think of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation. A few are, like me, former Roman Catholics. When I mentioned Joseph A. Komonchak’s comment in Commonweal (“Benedict’s Act of Humility”) that the pope’s resignation...
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Donald Cozzens, John C. Cavadini, Sidney Callahan
Donald Cozzens
Many hope that the worst of the sexual-abuse crisis is over. Frankly, I fear the worst is yet to come. Consider the battered church of Boston and the not-guilty plea entered on June 11 by accused priest Paul Shanley, who claims he was...
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Few tools in the historian’s kit are as fundamental as periodization. By naming distinct stretches of time, historians give shape to history’s flow: the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Age of Exploration (or, alternatively, of...
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Bill Casey, David O'Brien
Recently, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) marked its fifth anniversary. News stories reported the organization’s accomplishments, its current challenges, and reflections by friends and critics about its record and its future. The question is: Does...
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In a recent column, Los Angeles Times reporter William Lobdell wrote movingly about covering religion, his Christian faith, and his attraction to the Catholic Church. Lobdell had been thinking of converting to Catholicism before he started reporting...
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Dean R. Hoge, James D. Davidson
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During his tenure as cardinal archbishop of Boston, Bernard Law vigorously defended the position of the Catholic Church on abortion, which is sometimes described as an “unspeakable” act in authoritative church teaching.
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One of the most interesting and hopeful developments to come out of the Catholic Church’s sexual-abuse crisis is the lay reform group Voice of the Faithful. Founded in February 2002, VOTF has quickly established itself as a lay initiative that must...
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It is now almost a cliché to say that the sexual-abuse scandal of the last year is the worst crisis in the history of the American church. The sustained media coverage, subsequent disillusionment, and passion aroused by the scandal have no parallel...
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The current crisis in the Catholic Church regarding the sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy certainly demands our attention. Sexual abuse, any abuse, of our children is clearly wrong. But, we must remember, it is equally wrong whether...
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No
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This is a story about a priest I knew, and what he did to me. I was not molested, exactly. But something happened.
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According to Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, in the first century AD the Roman emperor Caligula “wrote his laws in a very small character, and hung them upon high pillars, the more effectually to ensnare the people.” Twelve...
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In his last years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and from the beginning of his papacy, Pope Benedict has demonstrated a real understanding of the nature and scope of the clergy sexual-abuse crisis.
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The priest, Fr. Monaghan, sat in his office listening to the clock. The office was a small and windowless room behind the auditorium, cluttered with books and diplomas, portraits and mementos, and sitting at his desk Monaghan looked like a teenager...
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The Italian word dietrismo translates literally as “behind-ism,” but it means more than that. It expresses the Italian belief that things are never as they seem, that there is always a story behind the public story. The powerful know what’s really...
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In 2003, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ National Review Board put together a request for proposals for two studies of the church’s sexual-abuse scandal. One study would examine the “nature and scope” of the crisis.
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A reluctant yes
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There are scandals and then there are scandals. Most are ugly, absorbing, and quickly forgotten. A few change history. The current flood of revelations about Catholic priests sexually preying on minors and the failure of Catholic officials to expose...
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
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"The application of the policies adopted in Dallas can be the source of confusion and ambiguity." Is this response from the Vatican an honest one, or does it forecast serious trouble? Is it possible that some Vatican officials don’t get it? If so,...
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In the homily at his April 15 installation Mass, New York’s new Archbishop Timothy Dolan candidly acknowledged the many challenges facing the church, including the priest shortage and the economic crisis. Importantly, he also mentioned the sexual-...
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The Catholic Church in the United States owes its sister church in Ireland a great deal. It was the Irish who first brought our faith to these shores in great numbers, providing the nascent American church not merely with faithful lay Catholics in...
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Playwrights and screenwriters have had several years to mine the clergy sexual-abuse scandal, but it is only with John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Doubt that someone has written something of lasting artistic value.
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In July, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny delivered a stinging indictment of the Vatican’s handling of the sexual-abuse scandal in his country.
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In the summer of 1958, when I turned seventeen, I discovered and reported a case of an adult sexually abusing minors. For me the episode had some of the melodrama of a young adult novel, but it was nothing at all like the painful, often life-...
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By resigning, Pope Benedict served the church well. He has spared it another prolonged period of mounting disarray. He has "humanized" the papacy, as Joseph Komonchak and others have pointed out.
