Clerical sex abuse threatens existence of Catholic Church

The clerical sexual abuse scandal threatens the existence of the Catholic Church as an institution, the president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Gregorian University, Fr Hans Zollner said in Dresden in late February at a theme day on 'Escaping from Power, Seduction and Abuse'.

He discerned a systematic inability to act. Some churchmen were still trivialising or denying the abuse, and the church's responsibility for it. The church was traumatised, he said.

There was a connection between spiritual power, power attributed to theology and power sanctioned by canon law, he explained.

- From the current issue of The Tablet.