ROME (ITALY)
Crux
September 8, 2019
By John L. Allen Jr.
Notre Dame is basically the Texas of the American Catholic Church, meaning it tends to operate on the principle of “go big or go home.” They don’t do anything small under the Golden Dome, and that’s certainly true of a major series of events this academic year developed by Father John Jenkins, ND’s president, on the clerical sexual abuse crisis.
The series kicks off Wednesday, Sept. 25, with a panel titled “The Church Crisis: Where Are We Now?” to be held on the ND campus and livestreamed on the university web site as well as on Crux. The guiding idea is to pivot the conversation about the scandals away from rage and toward recovery.
To headline the event, Notre Dame easily could have relied on Peter Steinfels, a veteran Catholic journalist and thinker who’s covered the abuse crisis from the beginning and who penned a brilliant dissection in January of the bombshell Pennsylvania grand jury report.
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