Catholic Church Reform Begins With Leadership

Re “Catholic Church Must Lose the Psychobabble,” Commentary, Dec. 17: George Weigel’s analysis of the current sex abuse crisis sounds logical but doesn’t match the facts. Is clerical sex abuse really just homosexual molestation? Tragically, priests and bishops have abused minors of both genders. To define the problem as clerical gays run amok reflects the homophobia of many Catholic Church leaders but not the facts.

Was this crisis caused, as Weigel says, by weak, confused moral teaching and a lack of firm leadership on the part of the bishops? When we examine sex abuse at “ground zero,” the Archdiocese of Boston, we find no particular lack of clarity on church teachings, and we see a culture of clerical authoritarianism as strong as any in the country or, indeed, in the world. Treating the church like an army won’t bring about healing and justice. We need a broad, inclusive consultation and participation in the governance of the church.

The Rev. Austin C. Doran

Our Lady of Grace Parish

Encino

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Weigel’s commentary is right on. Cardinal Roger Mahony has been the prime mover in the festering culture of dissent within the Catholic Church in our Los Angeles Archdiocese. His call to open up discussion on celibacy was quickly rebuffed by the Holy See and his fellow cardinals. Bishop Wilton Gregory and other leading theologians have rightly put the emphasis on a return to orthodoxy with complete fidelity to the Magisterium. All of this has resulted in large numbers of disaffected and alienated Catholic laity and clergy in Los Angeles and the counties of Santa Barbara and Ventura.

The sexual abuse cover-ups by our priests are no less heinous than those reported in Boston. Up until 2000, Mahony would transfer such priests from one ministry to another, and hence the flood of current litigation. When the scandals erupted in L.A., his first order of business was to hire a well-oiled public-relations spin machine.

Our clergy, like those in Boston, must show some backbone and call for Mahony’s resignation. It is only then that the “healing process” of renewal will begin with a return to true Catholic identity, Scripture, culture, sacred art and music and tradition.

Stanislaus Pulle

Thousand Oaks

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Weigel’s dogmatic, ideological response to the Catholic Church’s recent scandals is breathtaking. The causes of the scandal, according to him, are the weakening of the church’s moral standing by an acceptance of liberal teachings and by “confused teenagers and young men weakened by a sex-saturated culture.”

Not only is he blaming the victims (an argument akin to the rapist’s “she asked for it”), but he completely ignores the central cause, the central issue, the thing that most upsets about the scandal -- that is, the decades-long policy of so many church officials to cover up the crimes; move priests from parish to parish without informing the new parishes of the priests’ histories, thereby endangering countless new children; and intimidate victims and their families to keep everything quiet.

This scandal has nothing to do with liberal Catholic theology versus conservative Catholic theology but with a hierarchy more interested in its self-preservation than with the well-being of its flock.

Richard Harris

Los Angeles