Inexplicably, discussing Pope Francis’ unexpected decision to prevent the American bishops from adopting a policy aimed at preventing sexual abuse, Albert Mohler gets something right.
Here you are looking at the magisterial hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church acting as it has throughout the centuries, and that is to protect the Church and to protect itself. And that is something that is now pretty much understood. Even as the Vatican has told the American Catholic bishops, they can’t even clean up their house, they can’t take action until after an international meeting of the presidents of the bishops’ councils.
Unhappily, Mohler fails to address two more important issues:
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The same shadow hangs over Protestant churches, most especially conservative and fundamentalist churches (like his own denomination, the Southern Baptists), because …
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The sex abuse crisis inheres in the degradation of Christianity’s death-wish theology.
Neither Catholicism nor Protestantism will deal adequately with the sex abuse problem until they stop trying to crush everybody into obedient brainless automatons.