Waiting for the “Spring”

Stephen White of Catholic University reflects on the fact that The Boston Globe‘s first Spotlight report (on clergy abuse) ran exactly one year after Pope John Paul II announced a Jubilee year, a “new springtime of Christian life.” It seems we are still waiting.

“It may be easy to compare the gloomy world of today to a brighter world as we remember it, and think that we would be better off the way we were. But it is worth remembering that the height of prestige and influence for the Catholic Church in the United States – before the post-Conciliar silly season, when Catholics were unified socially and politically and Masses were as full as the Catholic schools and seminaries – coincided with the decades of greatest institutional rot and corruption.”

Read the whole article.