Our Not-So-Glorious Selves
Joseph F. Wilson on the Crises of the American Catholic Church
It is ironic that the Catholic Church in the United States has become such a spectacle for the world. For years, I have dealt with African and Eastern Europeans who arrived here as summer supply priests with the idea firmly implanted in their minds that the American Church was a model of efficient organization for the rest of the world—a conviction that I have always found extremely naive.
It is now undeniable that something is very wrong. The revelations of situations of clerical sexual abuse of minors in various dioceses have arrived with numbing regularity, yet as horrifying as these are, how much more so what we have learned about the failure of the various dioceses to focus upon the victims and respond in a timely, compassionate way.
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