Religion Dispatches
Statistics are one way to tell the story: In 1984, 87% of Irish Catholics went to weekly Mass. In 2011, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said 18% of Dublin Church members attend services. Images are another option: gaggles of green-bedecked youngsters and young adults line the St. Paddy’s Day parade route, but in Dublin’s cathedral youthful faces only speckle the crowd.
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The Church has been put on notice.
Read MorePhiladelphia DA loses an important witness.
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As Catholic sex abuse scandals once again dominate headlines from Boston to Belgium, and even the fast-track canonization of Pope John Paul II is marred by questions of culpability, the role of the Catholic hierarchy in enabling clergy abuse seems indisputable, admitted even by die-hard church partisans like the Catholic League. But what’s less understood is how these same patterns persist in today’s Church, where demographic shifts and a dwindling priesthood may be creating a new set of scenarios for abuse. The story of Katia Birge is a case in point.
Read MoreSelf-styled “prophet” still faces other charges.
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To turn suddenly to sisters as the rescue workers for a male-led institution is to saddle them with a clean-up operation that would “naturally” be a woman’s job in patriarchy.
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