I think some people think that, you know, that the church is actually being very hypocritical about certain issues like homosexuality and gay marriage and trying to prevent nuns from questioning any church positions on sexuality, while at the same time many people think there was so much neglect and cover-up within the church of the priest sex-abuse scandal, with abusive priests sometimes just being moved to a different parish.

I want to read you something from the National Catholic Reporter. This is an article by Kathy Galleher - I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing her name correctly - from July 17th of this year. For nearly eight years, she worked as a psychologist at a treatment center for priests and religious, and she worked with a number of men who had committed sexual abuse.

She writes: The church has not yet been willing or able to examine its own role as an institution in concealing and enabling decades of abuse. The bishops have not taken collective responsibility for their actions and inactions and for the enormous pain they’ve caused. As much as the abuse itself, it is this failure by the hierarchy to acknowledge and accept their responsibility that has angered and disillusioned so many current and now-former Catholics.

The church hierarchy has started a fight with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. In the doctrinal assessment, they’ve accused the women of the church of betraying the core values of the church and of not being sufficiently trustworthy to reform themselves. They have ordered the women to be closely supervised.

These accusations seem more rightly to belong to the sexual abuse scandal rather than to the actions of LCWR. It was the bishops who, by protecting abusers, betrayed core values of the church and caused scandal to the faithful. It is the institutional church that appears not to be able to reform itself and to be in the need of outside supervision.

What’s your reaction to that? Because I think that expresses the views of a lot of people inside and outside the Catholic Church.