WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Register
December 10, 2018
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By Ed Condon
The recent sex-abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in the United States and beyond have mostly focused on the abuse of minors. At the same time, many recent revelations and allegations, as in the case of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, have involved the sexual abuse or harassment of adults.
How the Church deals with clerical sexual misconduct when it does not involve minors remains a thorny issue, but an increasingly urgent one. Independent investigations are currently underway by local bishops to examine allegations of serious sexual misconduct in seminaries in Boston, Philadelphia and Newark.
In a recent interview, Pope Francis highlighted how a “fashionable” acceptance of homosexual relations had entered the Church. During the recent USCCB assembly in Baltimore, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, made the same point, offering it as the explanation for how McCarrick was serially promoted, despite his sexual behavior apparently being known to the hierarchy.
Also in Baltimore, Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, who heads the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, said that the bishops need to have a “fulsome discussion about adult misconduct and how to deal with that.”
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