I promised myself I wouldn’t write about the abuse crisis again this week. But if you are in the United States, as I am, there’s no escaping it. It’s all anybody in the Church is talking about, including Pennsylvania’s bishops who met last week not far from the conference I was attending.
I spoke to one of them. He is committed to doing something to address the crisis but is not sure how to equip his priests to do so. He has already reinstated the traditional Ember Days and mandated days of fasting in his diocese. He was personally named in the grand jury report and mauled for his handling of some of the situations in his diocese. He claims that the cases predate his tenure and he had limited scope to influence their outcome. He is facing calls for his resignation.
