Interesting article from the UK Tablet on the sexual abuse report, focusing on the flashpoint of some of our discussions here. Personal or systemic sin? Or both?

“PIU difettoso, il migliore,” as they say in Rome: “The worse, the better.” The very awfulness of the report made it, at first, welcome reading within the Curia. If so many parish priests were really violating their vow of celibacy with boys, then a stern reinforcement of clerical discipline from above was all the more necessary. Soon, however, as public outrage became strident, the Holy See backed off, in its usual stately fashion. The Pope suggested that after all only those guilty “as a long-standing practice or with many males” needed be unfrocked; other priests, who had subsequently “curbed their desires” and “atoned for their infamous deeds with proper repentance”, might continue in parish ministry. The author of the report responded furiously, for he maintained that the rot ran deep. Not only lecherous clergy but the “do-nothing superiors of clerics and priests” were “partners in the guilt of others” by permitting “the destructive plague” to continue: the Church must be reformed! Rome turned frosty…

The year was 1050, the report was racily entitled Liber Gomorrhianus, its author was Peter Damian, the Pope was Leo IX.

Which of them was right? Peter and Leo are both saints now, yet Peter and Leo were at loggerheads about what to do with pederastic priests, because they were at loggerheads about what the scandal meant: whether it was merely slackness in discipline, or whether it was the sign of a crisis deep in the soul of the Church.