When Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, which came out last November, talked about how “the Church has to accept the unruly freedom of the Word” I knew that in all probability we were in a new era for the Catholic Church. In the founding story of Christianity that we find in the New Testament we are told that the close followers of Jesus were timid and frightened after he had left them.
I see I have drawn the ire of certain spokespersons for the victims of clerical sexual abuse by the report on the ACP website of our meeting with the NBSCCC. (The report can be found in its category on the ACP website) I was trying to highlight an issue that I regard as needing some open discussion in this whole sorry saga of clerical child sexual abuse. Priests who, having come out of the seminary with the emotional and sexual maturity of a teenager, due to the terribly restrictive nature of the recruitment and training, got involved in some form of relationship with a teenage girl.
