Religion & Law

I agree with Peggy Noonan that the Church should be thankful for the media coverage that provided the motivation to take the priest sexual abuse crisis seriously -- indeed, perhaps even to begin viewing it as a "crisis" in the first place.  I also agree with observers who point out that at least some of the media coverage is shaped by a not-too-subtle desire to discredit the Church.  Witness, for example, Get Religion's helpful comparison of the AP report of an Indian priest's alleged sexual abuse in Minnesota with the New York Times' coverage of the same allegations.  It has been troubling, though, that at least some Church leaders seem to be focusing their concern on the unfair media coverage, rather than on the events that put the Church in the position of having to deal with unfair media coverage.  It gives support to critics who say that the primary objective of Church leaders has always been defending the public perception of the Church, and that this mindset, as seen in the "blame the media" strategy, also contributed to the scandal itself.

Now to jump into some murky ecclesiological waters that are undoubtedly over my head, one of my concerns when I became Catholic was the extent to which my Catholic friends sometimes struggled to talk about their relationship with God, rather than their relationship with the institutional Church.  There are different dynamics going on here, I know, but I wonder if they stem from a common tendency to view the Church as the ultimate end of the Christian life, rather than as a body that "places herself concretely at the service of the Kingdom of God." (Compendium para. 50)  If Church leaders began with the questions, "What is the mission of the Church, and how have the Church's failings compromised that mission?," I wonder if the conversation would be any different than it is today.