All you have to do is look at the actions of groups like Voice of the Faithless and people like James Carroll, Richard McBrien, Joan Chittister and Frankie Kissling to see that Montalvos' description is accurate. Opportunists have seized upon what happened to promote a liberal agenda and weaken the absolute teachings of the Church. You're guilty as well, painting with such a large brush and characterizing what has happened as a meltdown. Take a look at the Catechism. It hasn't changed. What happened in Boston is not reflective of what has taken place in the vast majority of dioceses around this country. Boston has long had the reputation of being a cesspool. Is there some rot and corruption in the episcopacy? Sure there is. Just as there was when St. Atahanasius wrote "The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." in the 4th century.
The moral authority of the Catholic Church in America, and elsewhere, has been weakened, not by a few tired liberals, but the bishops themselves, two-thirds of whom transferred abusive priests after the bishops themselves knew about the abuse. Two-thirds!
And Rome has known about the extent of the problem for nineteen years, since Fr. Thomas Doyle, Secretary to the USCCB began sending detailed reports about clerical abuse in American dioceses to Rome in 1984.
Did the Pope know? Who knows, but there's no reason to think he wouldn't have reacted the way two-thirds of the American bishops reacted. Their principle concern was themselves, the reputation of the Church, and the reputation of the priests involved.
The victims, well, what happened to them was way on down the list of CYA priorities.
Now, like every other lie and deception that's ever told, it's coming home to roost. It's just that, in this case, the cumulative impact of hundreds of priests, abusing thousands of children, all with the wink and the nod of the local ordinary, has devastated the moral credibility of the hierarchy.
Look at the war in Iraq. Typically, the American bishops would issue some grandiose statement about the injustice of war, and you'd have hierarchs all over television opposing it.
Instead, one two-paragraph statement was released by the USCCB, equivocating all over the place. Nothing else. Nothing.
Voices of supposed moral authority have been silenced by their own moral cowardice.
As a result, no Catholic looks at a priest, no matter how holy he is or how well they know him, in the same way as they once did.
This is worse than a meltdown, Smedley. When anybody in a Roman collar is the butt of jokes, or the object of snickers when he walks by, you've got something smoldering that will take a generation to overcome.
Stop blaming the laity or outsiders for any of this. It's a problem created by and fostered by the Roman Catholic clergy, and they'll have to claw their way out of it.
Eliminating some of the secrecy and the clericalism would help, but clowns like Egan and Mahoney are never going to view the laity with anything but contempt. They'll have to die off for any change to happen, because, God knows, Rome is so afraid of being seen as succumbing to pressure that they won't be replaced.
O'Malley looks to be setting the pace here, as Michael Sheehan did in Santa Fe, by actually sitting down with victims and listening to them, one at a time. It's painful, but not near the cross that these young people (the ones who haven't killed themselves) have borne for 20 and 30 years.
I never thought I would live to see the day when the institution I love would be directly responsible for destroying the lives of some of its members.