Isn’t that an inevitability in any organization? The problem in the church as I see it as an outsider is a lack of checks on power. A vast hierarchy has developed over nearly two thousand years, and every crisis and schism in the Church has occurred fundementally as a resistance to a central authority that some factions of the Church and laity have viewed as either blind to their needs, or even acting in opposition to the n those needs. Whether it was liturgical disagreements, corruption or, as we are now, the abuse scandals, it all comes down to men who have been bequeathed vast power and influence using that influence to their own betterment.
I view the abuse scandal as a long road to hell paved with good intentions. The desire to protect the Church from scrutiny and, yes, possibly even condemnation, overrode every sense of morality, ethics and common decency. I get why it happened, and I think that most of the clergy are decent and honest people, but they became actively or tacitly complicit out of fear. Mix that with the inevitable ladder climbers and you have the perfect conditions of a nightmare.
I have an enormous respect for the Church, even if I have a decidedly different world view. I believe Western Civilization owes the Church an enormous debt. But the Church has steadily been drawing on that bank, to the point that is now nearly completely discredited itself. There’s not a lot of moral authority left, and it needs to reform rapidly, to demonstrate not just in word, but in deed. It needs its own internal Counter-Reformation, and I think Francis is the man to do it, but he’s got a vast and fossilized edifice below him, propped up by the hyper-conservative factions in the Church who still seem to be under the impression that they somehow are masters of events. If they succeed , the Church will become as impotent and disunited as the Anglican Communion.
