Fr Joseph M. Esper starts it with this...then click for full article if interested.
"During the past year and a half the Catholic Church in America has been rocked by revelations of widespread clerical sexual misconduct with minors, made worse by various attempted coverups by ecclesiastical authorities. Many instances of abused trust and lost innocence have come to light, resulting in grave harm to the Church’s overall reputation and credibility. Catholics are being forced to confront some painful questions and realities. Victims wonder if they can remain in a Church so slow to hear their cries for justice, while perpetrators hope for forgiveness and a way to atone for their sins; lay persons wonder if they can trust their priests and bishops, while innocent clergy live with a sense of bewilderment and the fear of false accusation. Parishes who’ve had pastors removed due to misconduct struggle with a sense of shock and loss, potential converts to Catholicism experience new doubts and hesitations, and bishops second-guess their handling of some admittedly very painful and difficult situations. This agonizing process of honest reassessment, which is both necessary and overdue, has the potential to make the Church stronger and holier—and because it forces so many of us as Catholics to confront some painful truths, we might say that in a certain sense, it’s a foreshadowing of the Warning...."
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