From 2019: The imaginary encounter between Ratzinger and Bergoglio is imaginative, and emotionally satisfying. But we need to remember that it never happened.
His 2019 essay departs not only from the current pope’s analysis of the sex-abuse crisis, but also from that of almost everyone else who has studied it.
In 2002, the recently deceased Archbishop Rembert Weakland resigned amid a sex scandal. The end of his ecclesiastical career was the start of a spiritual journey.
In the United States, there is a growing gap between Catholic academia and the institutional Church, one that hinders our ability to understand the sex-abuse crisis.