Tim Fernholz on the Catholic Church’s continuing complicity in sexual abuse:
Forgive me for this parochial digression, but I will not be going to Mass this Easter Sunday.
You’ll know why if you’ve been reading the papers. The rash of newly uncovered sexual-abuse scandals in the United States and Europe paints a terrible picture of the church’s ability to protect its most vulnerable charges from the predations of its leadership. While the pattern of abuse in the church has been known to Catholics in the United States at least since the scandals in Massachusetts were revealed at the beginning of the decade, the news of Pope Benedict XVI‘s own complicity has finally worn through my tolerance.
That, and the awful timing. Easter is a holiday of joy for Christians: Christ is risen! These scandals, though, call for reflection more appropriate to the current Lenten season of repentance, and I sense very little remorse from the church — not enough for me to celebrate with it when Lent ends this weekend.
