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WillIam D. Lindsey

In a comment a moment ago here, Mary writes,

How sick is it that so many well-meaning, practicing Catholics are able to be desensitized to to the horrible reality of clergy sex abuse, all so their sacramental experience of weekly mass isn’t tarnished. I was once one of them.

The word “desensitized” hits me between the eyes. I hear myself in that word: I hear the word as an accurate description of how I’m in danger of becoming, as I read yet another story about abuse of children by Catholic clergy, and the longstanding cover-up of that abuse.

Mary’s comment flashed into my email inbox just as I happened to be reading several articles about the action that the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals took a number of days ago. The court ruled that the archdiocese of St. Louis…