John Paul II and Benedict XVI gave us the Catechism

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Even on Catholic Answers Live, Phil Lawler and Cy Kellett seemed to agree that these two Popes bear some responsibility for the clerical sex abuse scandal.

That may be true and they may have actually seen the problem coming. But, what they DID was to give the Church the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which they put forth as the “deposit of the faith.” I think that certainly was needed since the Church seemed to be starting to unravel in ways that these Popes could clearly see.

What I saw in the Catechism clearly was the lack of explicit mention of statements regarding the conduct of the Church itself, which seems to have left the door open for the scandals of the Vatican Bank, the international sexual abuse scandals, the enormous loss of Church funds to payments to silence victims of sexual abuse in the U.S., and the damage to the reputation and status of the evangelical Catholic Church of Jesus Christ.

Certainly the CCC gave us the basic underlying statements of morality, but the CCC did not go far enough and fast enough, even when the problems were getting out of hand.
 
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I don’t think the Catechism was supposed to do what you’re saying it was supposed to do. You can’t blame the Catechism for the scandals.

-Fr ACEGC
 
What??? don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t covet, don’t sexually abuse – isn’t that all in there?

The CCC was, IN THE FIRST INSTANCE, addressed to the BISHOPS. I’m not sure they read the instructions.
 
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Yes, it’s all in there. So there doesn’t need to be some special additional prohibition against sex abuse and corruption. Not every possible moral eventuality has to be spelled out, and in fact, as we see in a lot of discussions on the forum, not everything is. General principles are elucidated and we can use our common sense from there.

The purpose of the Catechism was not to provide safeguards and accountability and procedures for dealing with those things. The purpose of the Catechism and every past catechism has simply been to compile and elucidate the teaching of the Church. Blaming some supposed lacuna in the Catechism for the sex abuse crisis is a little bit like being upset that your car broke down and the Spanish dictionary didn’t contain any information about how to maintain it.
 
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edward_george1 said:
Blaming some supposed lacuna in the Catechism for the sex abuse crisis is a little bit like being upset that your car broke down and the Spanish dictionary didn’t contain any information about how to maintain it.
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^^^^^^^^^^^
Father, I may steal that turn of phrase.
 
And yet, each country might catechise differently to educate its Catholics, as is the experience in Australia compared with that of USA.
Yet both have a huge issue with historic sex abuse of children.
Nullifies your argument somewhat.

We must stop blaming anyone besides the perpetrators. We must stop shifting blame. Those who perpetrated the crime are those responsible, not the leaders of the Church.
 
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896 The Good Shepherd ought to be the model and “form” of the bishop’s pastoral office. Conscious of his own weaknesses, "the bishop . . . can have compassion for those who are ignorant and erring. He should not refuse to listen to his subjects whose welfare he promotes as of his very own children. . . . The faithful . . . should be closely attached to the bishop as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father“
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This is a good part from part one, section two, chapter three, article nine, paragraph four, n. 896. But there are other ones on that same page about the conduct of bishops.
 
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