Scandalo

Excerpted from The New Yorker:

"Benedict’s term, in fact, has been characterized by an intensifying disapproval of would-be reformers. In a homily last spring, the Pope denounced the efforts of a reforming priest in Austria, where a hundred and fifty thousand Catholics have left the Church in response to revelations of sex abuse in that country, and called upon Catholics to embrace instead “the radicalism of obedience.” Last fall, the Vatican dismissed an American priest who had participated in an ordination ceremony for a woman. The Church is doctrinally immune from majority rule, so perhaps it doesn’t matter that, according to a 2010 Times poll, sixty-seven per cent of American Catholics think priests should be allowed to marry and fifty-nine per cent think women should be allowed to be priests. Yet surely a Church that expels a priest for advocating women’s ordination faster than it does men who have been credibly accused of raping children is in some kind of trouble.