UNITED STATES
The Federalist
November 23, 2018
By John Daniel Davidson
Catholics leaving the church over the sex abuse crisis are giving into the false notion that the sacraments depend on blameless clerics.
Many Catholics were outraged last week when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops failed to take action to address the clergy sex abuse crisis. Almost as soon as the bishops convened in Baltimore, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the conference president, announced he’d received a letter from the Holy See instructing the conference not to vote on measures that would bring greater accountability to bishops. Instead, they were told to wait for a synod on the crisis that Pope Francis will host in Rome in February.
The news went down like a lead balloon. For some Catholics, it was more than they could bear. Melinda Henneberger, a columnist for USA Today and former Vatican correspondent for The New York Times, announced she was leaving the church. Addressing the bishops directly, she wrote: “After a lifetime of stubborn adherence on my part and criminal behavior on yours, your excellencies, you seem to have finally succeeded in driving me away.”
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