Revelations of sex abuse in the Catholic Church and its cover-up have been pouring out for more than twenty-five years now. The abuse has been horrific, and its consequences have been profoundly corrosive within the Church and sad and appalling for its friends. Part of the tragedy is that, although some of the underlying abuse took place decades ago, efforts at comprehensive accounts, credible responses, and effective reforms on the part of both Church and state have only come in fits and starts and remain uncertain.
But does this terrible crisis raise any deep questions of theory or principle with respect to either the cultural tension between secularity and faith or the existential legal encounter between religion and the state? On the surface, the answer might seem to be no. Some predations are so despicable and tragic that they seem to transcend the usual clash of normative worlds. But there are deeper currents at work here that reveal not just potential tensions but important, dialectical, interactions. The dialogue between any religious community and the world around it is a continuing labor of the normative imagination, rarely easy and never static.
Read Full Article »