KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
February 16, 2019
by Hank Shea, Thomas Wheeler
The Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, through a grand jury investigation supervised by his office, has claimed that the investigation revealed the truth about the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church: “Now we know the truth: [the abuse] happened everywhere.”
The grand jury’s report, released August 2018, highlighted in horrifying detail sexual abuse crimes and misconduct that spanned over 70 years, involved six Pennsylvania dioceses, implicated 300 predator priests and identified over 1,000 child victims. But as with any report that contains such shocking and highly disturbing allegations, people want to know the evidence: Who made the allegations? When did the crimes occur? What was the church’s response? More simply, they want to know the details of the investigation and how its findings were reached.
Some commentators who have analyzed the Pennsylvania’s grand jury’s investigation have found it seriously deficient. Peter Steinfels, in a lengthy Commonweal article, has provided the most trenchant critique. Such criticism has spawned a debate as to how the investigation was conducted and ultimately, the legitimate use of the Pennsylvania grand jury report. (See this piece by Nicholas Frankovich in the National Review, this view by Christopher R. Altieri in The Catholic World Report and this response by George Weigel at First Things.)
As such, the fairness of the investigation and value of the report have been called into question — did the grand jury’s investigation consider, and its report properly present, all the relevant information? Has the public been provided an accurate and balanced picture? What is the actual truth?
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