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Cathleen Kaveny at dotCommonweal posts this on the report of abuse of children in Catholic institutions in Ireland:
Most people are virtue theorists — or rather, practitioners of virtue theory–whether they know it or not. On difficult moral questions, most people trust the judgment of those who have shown themselves to exemplify probity of mind and judgment about a thousand incidents, important and unimportant. We trust the claim that a way of life is important and good because we trust the judgment of those who are further along that way. Conversely, we do not trust, and ought not trust, those who advocate patterns of life whose destructive nature we can see for ourselves, or who have proven themselves morally deficient in important and grave respects. It’s not a question of one or two mistakes–it’s a question of a pattern of life.
This sensible instinct to trust those whom we have reason to believe are trustworthy is what is strained in the Irish abuse cases.
No polemic against the existence of God, no DaVinci Code, no evolutionary biologist, will do more to undermine the authority of the Catholic Church and its claim to discern and to proclaim truth, and to point toward a life of human flourishing, than this report will...
Irish sex abuse crisis
How true. We automatically looked up to priests, teachers, scout leaders, or anyone who holds a position of honor and goodness.
ReplyDeleteThis report truly does undermine the authority in the Catholic church, as did the sexual abuse crisis in the United States.
It sickens me.
ReplyDeleteBut this is our legacy. This is part of our Church culture that needs to be transparent--owned--in the interest of truth and reconciliation.
And many will leave because of it.
I worry about who will be left.