“The Catholic Church is afflicted with a rigged clerical system incapable of monitoring itself. It is tempting to despair of the ‘Catholic’ brand, which many of us were once quite proud to claim. It may be time to own our despair. The clerical system isn’t working anymore. Perhaps it was never meant to work, only we didn’t realize it.” (National Catholic Reporter)
In the United States, Voice of the Faithful, a group of lay Catholics founded in 2002 to respond to survivors and ensure a greater voice for laypeople following the revelations of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston, has long called for reforms to the process for selecting bishops.
In the Vineyard :: November 23, 2020 :: Volume 20, Issue 22
“On the same day last week (Nov. 10), two reports on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church made headlines. The first report, released by the Vatican, is the so-called ‘McCarrick report’ … The second report was released by an independent commission in the U.K … What the reports have in common is long lists of sexual abuse victims and their broken families.
“Even more, it (McCarrick Report) gives us a close-up view of concentric layers of plausible deniability and culpable ignorance, powered by clericalism, that allowed McCarrick to evade discovery or accountability.” (America: The Jesuit Review.)
