AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Godless Gross
Dick Gross has written and broadcast about living and dying without a god for over a decade
The Catholic train wreck is unfolding before us. An organisation that claims moral leadership ought to be a paragon.
The evidence of abuse has been compounded by a sordid protection of the guilty and the resistance to scrutiny and change. Weird and neolithic attitudes about obedience, sex and forgiveness appear to have produced strange and cruel consequences. The damage to lives is incalculable. This we all know and have known for years. It has consumed this blog on and off for some time.
But what is the damage to the church and its moral authority?
In all of the noise and fury, we may be witnessing a historical moment for faith in Australia. Apart from the damage to individuals, what does this crisis mean for Catholicism and other faiths? Will it destroy the credibility of Catholicism as we know it or will it galvanise the change agents in the Catholic kingdom and lead to adjustment and renewal? Can the reputational damage be limited to Catholicism?
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