Every once in a while there’s a break in the bad news about the church. The good news for several weeks has been the election of Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina as pope. His is a kind and fresh face of an elderly man with a heart, and his symbolic gestures suggest that this new face may represent a new spring for the battered church.

But I was reminded Tuesday night that the bad news is still alive and well: in the old Bleeker St. Theater in lower Manhattan a very articulate panel of five men and one woman joined forces to discuss, for a crowd of over 100, Michael D’Antonio’s Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime and The Era of Catholic Scandal. The five panelists were also leading characters in the book, a narrative of the sex abuse scandal from 1984 to the present.

Young, athletic, highly educated, ambitious and assigned to the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C., Fr. Tom Doyle saw himself on a career path to becoming a cardinal. Richard Sipe, a Benedictine monk and psychologist, loved the church but was uncomfortable with obedience. Patrick Wall, also a monk, was a “fixer,” skilled in helping the order deal with problem clerics. Jeff Anderson was a very tough lawyer known for representing troublemakers and for wild parties at which he drank too much. Barbara Blaine was a full-time Chicago social worker who set up a Catholic Worker house where she worked herself into exhaustion, until one day she read the ground-breaking Jason Berry article in the National Catholic Reporter on Fr. Gilbert Gauthe. Shocked, she recognized the symptons of abuse in the article also in the disturbed people she encountered daily in her work.

Tuesday night each one explained how discovering the ugly depths of the abuse epidemic transformed each one’s life and career into one of struggle, as they saw it, against an institution—though not necessarily a faith—that covered up the crimes of priests, that valued its own status and reputation more than it did the welfare of innocent young victims. Doyle, a canon lawyer, gave up his careerism, served as an air force chaplain, researched the sex abuse issue and reported his findings to the bishops. Sipe researched the sexual life of the clergy and found too few who actually practiced the rules of celibacy. Wall, offended by the immoral behavior of his colleagues, left, married and also researched sexual behavior. Anderson learned how to take on the Catholic hierarchy with lawsuits and also to deal with his own alcoholism. Blaine founded the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

What do these five hope for in the future? Sipe feels that the church, to save itself, must give up its obsession with secrecy. Wall urges that everything be done to rid us of child pornography, which played in part in every corruption case he knew of. Doyle, who told me afterwards that he is still a priest but has had to devote his whole ministry to this cause, wants the church to do what Jesus did, reach out to the victims. Anderson still sees himself confronting “absolute corruption.” The absolute best thing the church could do, he said, is to work women into its very top management. And Blaine wants to keep the pressure up to the point of bringing the legal cases against the church to the International Criminal Court.

These are all justly angry men and women who have been transformed by the experience of what they have witnessed, and we must sympathize with them. Their last request was that the audience write their congressmen to extend the statute of limitations so more molesters could be sued. In the 1980s I wrote frequently about this issue in the National Catholic Reporter and the Newark Star Ledger, where I recommended that the church rent Yankee Stadium for a world-class penance service. Meanwhile a New Hampshire priest, Gordon MacRae (nephew of a Jesuit), sent me a book-length manuscript from prison arguing that he had been unjustly convicted. Today, almost 20 years later he has a prison website still claiming his innocence, plus a team of defenders and list of articles, including from the Wall Street Journal, supporting him. I wish someone with the resources would research it and discover the truth. And we will always remember that Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., courageously opposed the “zero tolerance” rule where one offense removes a priest from ministry for life. It’s the same question that confronts Christians in the wake of the Boston Marathon: Can Christians show compassion for both the victims and the accused? Can they refuse and still call themselves Christians?

Son of Raymond A. Schroth, of Trenton, N. J., a World War I hero and editorial writer and reporter for the Trenton Times, Brooklyn Eagle and New York Herald Tribune for over 40 years, and of Mildred (Murphy) Schroth, of Bordentown, N. J., a teacher in the Trenton public and Catholic school systems, Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., has spent his life as a Jesuit, journalist, and teacher.

After graduating from Fordham College in 1955--where he majored in American civilization, studied in Paris, and was editorial editor of the Fordham Ram--he served as an antiaircraft artillery officer in Germany for two years and joined the Society of Jesus in 1957. Ordained a priest in 1967, he obtained his PhD in American Thought and Culture at the George Washington University and taught journalism at Fordham until 1979. During that time he was also associate and book editor of Commonweal magazine.

After two years as academic dean of Rockhurst College in Kansas City, he became academic dean of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. In 1985-86 he held the Will and Ariel Durant Chair in the Humanities at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City. From 1986 to 1996 he taught journalism at Loyola University in New Orleans and was adviser to the Maroon, its award-winning newspaper. In 1995 the Southeast Journalism Conference named him Journalism Educator of the year. In 1996 he returned to Fordham as assistant dean of Fordham College Rose Hill and director of the Matteo Ricci Society, which prepares students to compete for prestigious fellowships. Meanwhile, from 1967 he served as a resident faculty member in the student residence halls.

He has published eight books, including: The Eagle and Brooklyn: A Community Newspaper (Greenwood); Books for Believers: 35 Books Every Catholic Should Read (Paulist); with Jeff Theilman, Volunteer: with the Poor in Peru (Paulist); and The American Journey of Eric Sevareid (Steerforth), a biography of the CBS commentator.

In 1999 he moved to Saint Peter's College, where he wrote two books: From Dante to Dead Man Walking: One Person's Journey through Great Religious Literature and Fordham: A History and Memoir, (Loyola Press in 2001-2002). In 2000 Saint Peter's College named him the Jesuit Community Professor in the Humanities. In Spring 2003 he was made editor of the national Jesuit university review, Conversations and will continue to serve in this position until 2013. His The American Jesuits: A History, (New York University Press, 2007), was followed by Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress, (Fordham University Press, 2010). He taught a graduate journalism course at NYU in 2004 and journalism history at Brooklyn College in 2006.

In recent summers he has traveled to Gabon, South Africa, Peru, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, France, Thailand, Vietnam, Cuba, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, and China to educate himself, write articles, and take pictures. In 2003 his National Catholic Reporter media essays won the Catholic Press Association's best cultural columnist award. His over 300 articles on politics, religion, the media, and literature have appeared in many publications, including the Columbia Journalism Review, Commonweal, America, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, Kansas City Star, Boston Globe and the Newark Star Ledger, where he was a weekly online columnist for several years. From time to time he lectures and appears on radio and TV. He is listed in Who's Who and Contemporary Authors. In his free time he swims, bikes, walks, reads, goes to movies and restaurants, and prays.