VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Oct. 12, 2012

Synod of Bishops 2012

Benedict XVI raised some eyebrows last night when, addressing a crowd in St. Peter’s Square recalling Pope John XXIII’s famous “discourse on the moon” on the eve of the Second Vatican Council fifty years ago, he said the church’s joy today is “more sober” than it was then, because in the meantime “we have learned and experienced that original sin exists.”

“We have seen that even in the Lord’s field there is discord,” Benedict said, “that even in the net of Peter we find bad fish, that human weakness is present even in the church.”

Though the pope didn’t say so out loud, it’s difficult not to imagine he had the child sexual abuse scandals at least partly in mind when he crafted those lines.

Today, awareness of the impact of…