CALIFORNIA
Catholic San Francisco
By George Raine
Ten years after the crisis of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests first captured the nation’s attention, Santa Clara University on May 11 hosted a conference to take stock, to determine what needs to be done to reduce risk that any child is injured.
“We pat ourselves on the back for the successes, but we are not done,” said Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara and conference co-host.
The conference title, “Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis, 2002-2012,” is the same as the title of a book co-edited by Plante, who has conducted 700 psychological evaluations of candidates for seminaries over 25 years.
The so-called 10-year anniversary of the crisis – the Boston Globe reported widespread abuse in Boston in 2002 – presented an opportunity for what Plante in an interview called reflection and discernment, and also a forum for critics of the institutional church response to assail the nation’s bishops.
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