THE VIEW FROM (AND IN) THE U.S.
Thanks in part to the hyperventilating language of last year’s Pennsylvania grand jury report (which followed hard on the heels of Theodore McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals because of credible allegations that he was a serial sexual abuser), the false impression was created that the Catholic bishops of the Keystone State (and by extension, the bishops of the entire United States) had done nothing and were doing nothing to address an unabated scourge of clerical sexual abuse. Or as the Pennsylvania report put it, with more vehemence than accuracy, “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all.” That was not true, or at the very least it was not the entire truth of the matter over time. For by conflating seventy years of data, the Pennsylvania grand jury report (and, more importantly, lazy journalism about it) suggested that there was an unaddressed rape culture in the Catholic Church. That was also not true, for it irresponsibly (but perhaps deliberately) ignored the many steps taken by the bishops of the United States to make U.S. Catholicism what it arguably is today: one of the safest environments for young people in the country – and a far safer environment than the Pennsylvania public schools, which remain unexamined by any grand jury despite hundreds of recent reports of abuse.
