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Who are we as a church? What is our leadership about? What kind of culture does it create?
These are just a few of the ever so narrow questions NCR senior correspondent John Allen and editor at large Tom Roberts just dealt with during a panel on how Catholics are confronting the abuse scandal at our briefing in Washington, DC.
“The sex abuse crisis isn’t so much to do about sex as it is about the culture of the church,” said Roberts. The question is “how do we address the clerical culture?”
Allen addressed three implications of the current scandal on the church's public image and its public policy: that the church, in the short term at least, will continue to be self-defensive; that the scandal has made it impossible to tell any other story about the church; and that it may accelerate the shift in the church's population from the global North (Europe, U.S.) to the global South (Latin America, Africa).
Next up is law professor Helen Alvare on 'Abortion and the Significance of the Law.' What questions would you ask of her?