Stephen P. White

Pope Francis has given the bishops a great opportunity to confront the abuse crisis; they ought to make the most of it by pushing forward with as much determination as ever.

The motu proprio released earlier this month by Pope Francis – Vos estis lux mundi – is not everything the Church in the United States could have hoped for, but it is a good deal more than many expected. And it’s a great lunge forward for the Church globally, much of which still lags far behind the Church in the United States when it comes to the handling of allegations of clerical sexual abuse.

For ecclesiastical leaders to begin to regain the confidence of their flocks, they’re going to have to find ways to overcome the distrust of one another.

No one needs to be sold on the importance of a robust and faithful response to the Catholic Church’s current sexual-abuse crisis. But if everyone agrees that the Church is in crisis, there’s less agreement about just what the nature of the crisis is, what caused it, or how to fix it. That’s where The Catholic Project comes in.

Pope Francis is right to be wary of legalistic and bureaucratic “remedies” to what is fundamentally a spiritual and moral crisis. But given everything we know about how episcopal and priestly malfeasance has been handled – or rather, mishandled – in recent decades, there is reason to wonder whether Pope Francis’ highly personal, even ad hoc, pastoral approach to wayward bishops is the most prudent model for the Church today.

As the Church takes a hard look at ways to correct for widespread failures in the clergy, and especially the episcopate, she will have to take care to delineate what sorts of changes are theologically and sacramentally permissible and which are not.

It’s worth remembering that reporting mechanisms and systems of accountability, while important, do nothing to address the root of the crisis in the Church, which is fundamentally a crisis of fidelity.

Last week’s summit in Rome focused on protecting minors from sexual abuse. It was a start. But it was, in many ways, very far from the end.

In one sense, laicization would bring Theodore McCarrick’s part in the saga of the clerical sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church to a deservedly ignominious end. But of course, the bitter fruits of his sins are still ripening to harvest.

While the failings of priests and bishops are an obvious place to start for dealing with the current crisis, the way toward genuine reform will require careful thinking and a broader perspective, including the laity’s place in the life, governance, and mission of the Church.

Pope Francis clearly understands that there is a crisis of credibility in the American episcopate. It is less clear that he understands why.

Care for due process and the rule of law is as important within the Church as without. Without a clear, well-defined, and carefully executed canonical framework for handling abuse allegations, the Church is left with an ad hoc, almost haphazard, legal approach.