UNITED KINGDOM
National Catholic Reporter
Jun. 14, 2012
By Jonathan Luxmoore, Catholic News Service
OXFORD, England — A top church historian said the Catholic church has failed to learn lessons from sexual abuse by clergy and cited evidence the problem also was mishandled in previous centuries.
“Unlike his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI has seen the necessity of reacting strongly to abuse, but the Vatican still isn’t facing up to the reasons for it — in particular, its connection with universal clerical celibacy,” said Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at Oxford University.
“Rome is still vehemently denying any such connection, but to me as a historian it’s blindly obvious. The church will be in trouble if it doesn’t tackle the root causes,” MacCulloch told Catholic News Service on Monday.
He said complaints of a cover-up of sexual abuse had been widespread in 17th-century Italy, when celibacy was made compulsory for all Catholic priests during the Counter-Reformation.
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