Hypocrisy, not repression, causes Catholic sex abuse scandals

By Tim Stanley
Telegraph
July 31, 2018

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/31/hypocrisy-not-repression-causes-catholic-sex-abuse-scandals/

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick pictured in 2015. Pope Francis has accepted his resignation following allegations of sexual abuse, including one involving an 11-year-old boy Photo by Robert Franklin

Theodore McCarrick was an archbishop and a cardinal, one of the most powerful men in the American Catholic Church. He helped write church policies designed to protect young people from sexual abuse. He is now accused of abusing children. McCarrick has resigned as a cardinal and been ordered by the Pope to conduct a “life of prayer and penance” – a sign that the Church may think he’s guilty.

Catholics have confronted sex scandals many times in the past decades, but the old focus was on individual priests, usually low down the food chain, who the hierarchy were happy to paint as isolated offenders. This time everyone is under scrutiny, and the secular authorities are not only interested in abusers...