Sex Abuse Crisis: Sex and power issues expand clergy-lay rift

The United States -

More recently, yet another division has been added to the list pushing lay Catholics into further conflict with their clerical teaching authorities. This issue also deals with sex and authority, but in a different form.

The issue is clergy sexual abuse. It has received far greater national media attention and may be causing more lay Catholics to question the health of their church leadership than any of the earlier sex-based or related issues.

Lay criticisms of their clergy may not be new, but the widespread intensity of such criticism is, and should be, of considerable concern to episcopal leaders. Never was this new phenomenon more visible than at a recent national gathering of sexual-abuse victims of Catholic clergy held in a Chicago suburb last month.

Attacks on offending priests and denying bishops were mixed with remorse and anger -- and with sadness that their clergy had betrayed them, bitterness that the institution cared more about protecting its own priests than feeling compassion for the victimized.

Read the article at The National Catholic Reporter dated November 13, 1992