excerpts from (and some comments on) Catholicism After 2018 (First Things, October 2018)

"I entered the Catholic Church in 2004, two years after clerical sex abuse of adolescent boys and its cover-up were exposed in Boston. We learned that many of the bishops of the United States — perhaps nearly all during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—did little to root out priests who preyed upon boys and adolescents....Insofar as there was strenuous episcopal effort, it was devoted to keeping a festering problem secret....

"From 1990 until 2010, I taught at a Jesuit University and was privy to insider gossip. The Irish philosopher William Desmond recounted some of his experiences as a young scholar visiting Fordham in the 1970s. The main debate in the Jesuit dining room concerned whether or not sodomy constituted a violation of the vow of celibacy. Some priests took the line that celibacy concerns the conjugal act, not sterile sex between men [Did that incredibly amoral and stupid line of reasoning have any impact on a '68 alumnus of the Jesuit Georgetown University, who insisted that he did "not have sexual relations with that woman."]….

"A debilitating toleration has characterized the Church for decades. Since the widespread dissent from Humanae Vitae in 1968, the Church’s leadership has been reluctant to speak strongly and regularly on behalf of Christian sexual morality....

"For the most part, those in positions of responsibility do not like to have their consciences troubled, especially if it means having to choose between open-eyed acquiescence to corruption or making hard decisions that bring controversy. Someone who forces this reckoning is rarely welcomed. Thus grows a culture of denial, one capable of suppressing unpleasant and inconvenient truths—the church culture in which 'everybody knows' and nobody takes responsibility [Personally, I believe this also goes a long way in explaining such things as why "Catholic" hospitals allow abortifacient/ contraceptive prescribing physicians to have privileges and why some parish bulletins feature ads for pharmacies that prescribe abortifacients/contraceptives.]….

"Another aspect of the post–Vatican II ecclesiastical regime stems from something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, an anxious desire to avoid the return of the chaos that characterized the years after Vatican II....Like children of divorced parents, ...consumed by the need to hold things together....

"the dominant impulse is to do whatever it takes to hold things together. This includes avoiding another round of conflict over sexual morality, which is one reason why McCarrick’s pursuit of men was tolerated. After Humanae Vitae, the battle-scarred episcopacy for the most part has tried to avoid criticizing sex between consenting adults.

"Aspects of the long papacy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI encouraged this approach. The Polish pope rattled his sword, threatening to put the Society of Jesus into ­ecclesiastical receivership. In the end, there was no purge of the leadership of the Society of Jesus [cf., George Weigel's "Witness to Hope"]….Some of the craziness of the decade after Vatican II was sidelined....But religious orders, theology faculties, and other organs of the Church did as they pleased....

"As we look back after five years of Pope Francis, it’s clear that the JPII-Benedict era was one of talking loudly but carrying a small stick. [Heartbreakingly sad!]  Those two great popes followed Paul VI’s middle way, trying to buttress traditional elements of the Catholic faith over and against revisionist radicalism while accommodating all but the most extreme versions of liberal Catholicism....

"we believed that...problems would be solved when the JPII generation assumed power. Consoling as this narrative was, it turned out to be too consoling. We used it to divert our attention from the hard, depressing realities of the present. Which is all too understandable! In all likelihood, the vast system of parochial schools is a lost cause, a prisoner of apathy more than dissent. Catholic universities incubate a culture of dissent and will do so for the foreseeable future....

"Facing up to what McCarrick did will explode the hold-things-together approach, thank goodness. The temptation to avoid knowing (or to cover up) is powerful. This is how the ecclesiastical regime of our time works, not just when it comes to clerical malfeasance, but across a wide range of issues"

 (R.R. Reno, First Things, October 2018)