The U.S. Bishops’ early response to sex abuse, the 2002 Dallas Charter, jettisoned fundamental principles of fairness toward the accused. The stage was set for the situation now facing the Church in the United States: a collapse of morale among priests, a loss of trust in episcopal leadership, a nearly 25 percent decrease in seminarians and priestly ordinations over much of the last decade, and a growing sense that the rule of law does not mean much of anything inside the Church in the twenty-first century. Someday, Deo volente, the full story of the sexual abuse crisis and its aftermath will be told. The story will include an analysis of how, for years, bishops refused to apply canon law to cases of sex abuse and instead relied on psychological experts.
