ROME
La Croix International
May 22, 2019
By Cathleen Kaveny
This implacable defender of the existence of intrinsically evil acts refuses to call these acts by their most basic moral name: child rape
The debate about Benedict XVI’s recent intervention on the sex abuse crisis has focused on his account of its root causes. To the delight of conservatives and the consternation of progressives, he blames the lax sexual morality of the 1960s rather than the enduring phenomenon of clericalism.
In my view, the problem with Benedict’s letter is far more fundamental. It also transcends the American progressive-conservative divide. He gets the basic moral description of the acts of sex abuse wrong. He frames them as acts of sacrilege rather than grave injustice.
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