ROME (ITALY)
Crux
September 16, 2018
By John L. Allen Jr.
A scandal’s impact can be measured multiple ways, with the most obvious being the toll it takes in terms of bad press, litigation and settlements, declining attendance or market share, as well as disillusionment and outrage among the rank and file.
What’s often harder to assess is the opportunity cost – what else might an institution have done, had its energies not been focused on putting out its own fires?
That seems an especially pressing question in the United States right now with regard to the Catholic Church, which seems largely to be sitting out two important political fights in which it otherwise might have been a protagonist.
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