The Gospel reading for today, the third Sunday of Easter, is Luke’s familiar telling of two disciples’ journey to Emmaus. Michael B Kelly has used an interpretation of this story to draw an important lesson for lesbians and gay men…
Tag Archive for Church Abuse
Abuse and Suicide: A Moving Reader’s Response
My post on the church’s culpability in youth suicide has brought this moving comment, which has brought me , quite literally, to tears. I reproduce it here for your consideration, with no further comment - I have no words that…
Suicide, Abuse, and the Catholic Church
One of my earliest memories from primary school religion lessons is that suicide is a grievous sin, one of the worst of all. If that is so, how serious is it to be responsible for another person’s suicide? And how…
Examining the Abuse Crisis in the Church: NCR Review
It’s been a while now since I wrote anything at all about the problems of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. That is not because I’ve lost interest, and still less because the problem has gone away – quite the…
Background to the “War on the Church” in Belgium.
The Vatican, and many Catholic apologists around the world, have reacted with shock and anger to the Belgian police raids on the bishops’ headquarters and the residences of leading churchmen. Two useful background pieces at NCR offer some perspective on why,…
Can You Sue the Vatican? SCOTUS Says “Yes”.
“Can You Sue the Vatican?” was a headline I was seeing for a time on my Google News pages, referring to a lawsuit in Louisville, Kentucky, in which an abuse victim is seeking legal redress directly from the Vatican. The…
Belgium: Does Abuse Cover-Up Continue?
One of the repeated claims made by Church authorities to counter the outcry over abuse, is that while they acknowledge past mistakes, these are indeed all in the past, that procedures have been mended, and that in the church as…
Scottish Church & Accountability
One of the few positive outcomes of the outcry over sexual abuse has been an increased willingness by those who hold power in the church, to recognise the importance of honesty about the record, and of co-operation with civil authority.…
Investigation Team For Ireland Announced.
Pope Benedict has named the members of the “visitation” that he promised for Ireland back in March. Initial reaction has been mixed. On the positive side, the seniority of the team members is impressive, showing that the Vatican is taking this…
Mapping Church Abuse
After the German revelations started to snowball earlier this year, with additional revelations flowing fast from one country after another, it became for a time impossible to keep up, and more difficult still to make sense of just where the…
