Why on earth do we stay in a Church in which clerics commit sexual abuse? The easiest answer is realism. We tell ourselves that some sexual predators are drawn to seminaries, just as paedophiles seek out institutions that work with children, regardless of whether they’re religious or not. Public schools, choirs, scouts: the cancer grows everywhere.
And yet this argument just isn’t good enough, because when a sexual crime occurs in the Church it is 10 times worse. The betrayal is even deeper. Every offence committed by a cleric is a stain not just on the Church’s reputation, with which we can be inordinately obsessed, but the very soul of the institution. The Church asks its followers to confess their sins, but it seems far too slow to admit and atone for its own, and that hypocrisy has driven away thousands, possibly millions.
