Catholicism has entered a dark period in America. The Church's disgraceful handling of sexual-abuse scandals—with shocking new reports routinely emerging—plays a direct role in shrinking congregations and closed churches, especially in the Rust Belt. These revelations have shown an institution that protected its power while victimizing or dismissing the powerless. Already confronting dwindling vocations, aging priests, and fewer active members, the Church in America is challenged as never before, on a path to irrelevancy and disrepute. If counted as a denomination, ex-Catholics would make up the country's second-largest religious affiliation.
The Church reached a grim crossroads last year. In August, a Pennsylvania grand jury report, released by the state attorney general's office, detailed how bishops and clergy covered up the abuse of children by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years. The report identified more than 1,000 victims and cataloged sadistic examples of abuse in six of the state's eight dioceses. "Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability," the grand jury wrote. "Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades."
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