I have the utmost respect for those I know who are even now, fighting against abuse in the Church in "Catholic" countries. I often forget how different England and Wales are compared with Ireland and Malta, for example, which certainly do suffer from the kind of clericalism the Pope referred to in his open letter to the faithful . I am sure that the Pope's experience in South American tells a similar tale: whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives.[2] This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that “not only nullifies the character of Chr...
