Divine Intervention
by Michael Martin

Sexuality and organized religion have been at odds since approximately the beginning of time, but rarely as dramatically — and disastrously — as in the Catholic Church. According to church decree, priests must take a vow of celibacy, women are relegated to secondary status, and homosexuality, premarital sex and birth control are varying speeds on the express ride to eternal damnation. In her new book The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal, Karol Jackowski argues that this repressive sexual doctrine is responsible for the sexual abuse of children.

Since victims began coming forward, the Church has paid millions in damage settlements $85 million to 522 victims in the Boston area alone. A report released last February set the number of abused at 10,667. The number of abusers: at least 4,392. (Only two percent have been prosecuted.) The Catholic sociologist Andrew Greeley predicted that the number of victims was closer to 100,000.

It's a tragedy of breadth and density; the aftershocks are as deeply felt as the initial tremor of publicity. Last month, twenty-nine-year-old Patrick McSorley, a victim of a defrocked Boston priest and a vocal critic of clergy sex abuse, committed suicide seventeen years after he was abused. (Full disclosure: I was raised Catholic, and the priest was presided over my First Communion was later arrested, in a different parish, for molesting children.) Jackowski, an ordained nun since 1964, discussed the scandal from her perspective, the breakdown of organized religion and her vision of a universal church that incorporates a married priesthood, same-sex unions and women in positions of authority.