"You bring those factors to bear on a pre-existing state of affairs in which there was a squishiness at least in some seminaries circles on the subject of priestly celibacy and the obligations of priests, and you can see fairly clearly why the disaster that happened did happen," he observed."Unnecessary secrecy is a large part of the explanation for why the sex scandal turned out as badly as it did."
Catholic lay people, Shaw thinks, are also implicated in the general crisis. "American Catholics generally -- if the public opinion polls are to be accepted as truthful, and I think they should be on this matter -- long ago bought into the sexual ethic of secular America," he said. "'Humanae Vitae' is widely rejected in theory and practice by American Catholics. Abortion rates among nominal Catholics in the United States are quite high, etc. etc.
"The Catholic Church in the United States is a Church which somehow over the decades has become much too fond of money and much too fond of the little comforts which money can buy," said Shaw. "Harsh as it may sound, I would say that although I'm very, very sad that in the settlement of sex abuse cases so much money has ended up in the pockets of lawyers, on the whole I'm not at all sorry to see the money go," he said. "I think it will be a good thing for the Church in the long run to have a little less and maybe a lot less money to play around with."