PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic News Service
May 12, 2019
By Matthew Gambino
The clergy sex abuse crisis that engulfed the U.S. Church – and has since spread globally – requires understanding it as context for what is happening in the Church and society, according to journalist Peter Steinfels.
The global nature of the crisis means each new instance of abuse in any country becomes part of a single narrative for the Catholic Church everywhere – unlike any other institution, said Steinfels in an April 25 talk at Villanova University’s law school.
In the United States, the case of the disgraced former cardinal and now-defrocked Theodore McCarrick has intensified long-simmering divisions of conservative and liberal factions in the Church, each offering their own agendas for reform, said Steinfels, a former New York Times reporter, retired editor of Commonweal magazine and a retired professor at Fordham University in New York.
The crisis has also become part of “a civil war over the papacy of Pope Francis,” Steinfels said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.