The Elephant in the Synod

Hilaire Belloc once remarked that the Catholic Church must have a divine origin, because “no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight”. Belloc's gallows humour applies rather well in the current circumstances. The crisis of clerical sexual abuse and cover-up has demonstrated just how much incompetence and wickedness have disfigured the Church. As bishops from around the world meet in Rome this month for the Synod on Youth, that crisis is inescapable – and, at the outset, some bishops see the problem more clearly than others.