Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins has written a provocative essay on the wider implications of the clergy sex abuse crisis for American Catholicism. It’s not just that victims have suffered, that clergy have gone to jail, that the Church has paid billions of dollars in lawsuits, that charitable work has been curtailed, and that several dioceses have declared bankruptcy. The scandal has also diminished the Church’s voice on debates about law and religion. Where once people would have paid respect to the Church’s views, even if they disagreed with them, the crisis has so weakened the Church’s moral authority that people dismiss the institution and its arguments entirely. For example, in Jenkins’s view, the ineffectiveness of the Church’s voice has greatly influenced the debate on same-sex marriage:

One great “might have been” involves same-sex marriage. In light of present realities, it is hard to recall just how fringe and even bizarre an issue this seemed just a decade ago, and a large section of the American public is Read more