PHILAdELPHIA (PA)
Patheos
November 20, 2018
By Teresa Messineo
I live in the eye of the storm that is the Pennsylvania clergy sex abuse scandal. The diocese named, the schools, parishes, bishops and sex abuse survivors are all with me here, at ground zero. Photographs of people crying, or staring stoically ahead, or holding on to each other as our attorney general finally read the findings of the two-year grand jury investigation – those people aren’t just human interest stories, or a way to sell more papers, or images to lead off internet articles. They are my high school classmates. My teammates. My friends.
And the priests named in that report – the men who wrote us demerit slips for chewing gum or rolling down our dress socks, while they raped and tortured children – I know them, too. They were our class advisors, our religion teachers; they heard our confessions and doled out penances for our petty sins while they exonerated themselves from all wrong-doing.
The Catholic Church stands at a crossroads, globally. But nowhere is that more apparent than here, in Pennsylvania. Every fourth person in our state is Catholic. I’ve gone to mass in Pittsburgh, where there were three Catholic churches in one square block. Older Philadelphians still give directions by parish. So, the uncertainty facing the future of our church is – to a large extent – a shared uncertainty about our own future, the two are so closely enmeshed.
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