MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — The most comprehensive report ever published on the systemic reasons behind child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has recently been released.
A recent communication from my good friend in Australia, Paul Collins, contained the following:
“No doubt you are horrified at the terrible, shocking, appalling, unjust,
lack-of-due-process-way His Germanic Eminence Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller
has been treated by that appalling pope fellow. No process! No consultation!
No mercy! Not even re-appointed! Dear-oh-dear! How can this be? Especially
in light of how compassionate, merciful and committed to a just process the
CDF under the said cardinal and his predecessors has been.
A Church
where the most important decisions are made
almost exclusively by a celibate male clergy,
and where bishops are held to little or no accountability,
is unsustainable
in a world where patriarchal and monarchical societies
-begrudgingly, but steadily-
are ceding rights and duties to those
who are not part of the nobility, the clergy,
or one specific gender.
It’s not about the end of the Catholic Church,
but about the crumbling of the present governing and organizational structure that mirrors the Roman Empire
more than it reflects today’s reality or
ecclesial life that is found in the New Testament
or was experienced in the first couple of centuries of the Christian Church.
