This is not a movie about crime and punishment, but damage and recovery.
Sexual Abuse
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Jesuit: Priests need better guidelines for hearing confession from sex abuse victims—and abusers
The Catholic Church must do a better job instructing priests on what to do if a victim recounts his or her abuse in the confessional and in the unlikely case that an abuser confesses, said Hans Zollner, S.J.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
More than 4,200 allegations of clergy abuse reported, U.S. bishops’ annual audit shows
Released late Nov. 9, the 18th annual report from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection stated that 3,924 child sexual abuse survivors filed 4,228 allegations.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Catholic priest gets life sentence in child pornography and exploitation case
A Cleveland-area Roman Catholic priest has been sentenced to life in prison on convictions of child pornography and exploitation.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Sally Rooney isn’t just the ‘Snapchat Generation’s’ Catholic novelist (but she is that).
Is Sally Rooney the millennial generation’s great Catholic writer?
Posted inFaith, News
Pope Francis releases letter from sex abuse survivor: ‘We cannot close our eyes’ to sin in the church
An adult survivor of abuse by a priest appealed to the world’s seminarians to become good priests and to make sure the “bitter truth” always prevails, not silence about scandals and their cover-up.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
Young women, #MeToo and clergy sex abuse: Lessons from my students
My students at a Catholic women’s college have taught me—and can teach the rest of the church—a great deal about living in a church marred by the scandal of sexual abuse by clergy.
Posted inFaith, News
Court absolves former altar boy accused of abusing a younger boy in Vatican’s youth seminary
A Vatican tribunal absolved a former altar boy of charges that he molested a younger boy in the Vatican’s youth seminary, ruling Wednesday in the first clergy sexual abuse trial to be heard by the pope’s criminal court.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
‘This is a moment of shame’: Pope Francis says the church has failed to center abuse victims for too long
The Catholic Church’s inability to make victims of abuse their top concern is a cause for intense shame, Pope Francis said.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
The Catholic Church’s prayers for victims of sexual abuse are beginning to ring hollow.
You would think that “sex abuse” could not become commonplace, but in our petitions, it has—until something like France happens.