A Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States.

I have not read this one yet, either, but I did notice this:
"If you're conservative, homosexuality is the problem; if you're liberal, celibacy is the problem. So you tell me who you are, and I'll tell you what the problem is."

Excerpts from this report from the National Review Board:

Certainly, the debate implicates important developments in both the universal Church and the Church in the United States over the past fifty years. These developments include: the significant increase in vocations in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s; the Ecumenical Council of Bishops held from 1962 to 1965 known as Vatican II; the publication of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, which reaffirmed traditional Church teaching on sexual morality and artificial contraception, and the negative reaction to that encyclical by many priests and laity in the United States, fostering what is often termed the "culture of dissent" within the American Church; the exodus of almost twenty thousand men from the priesthood in the late 1960s and 1970s; and attempts to reform the priesthood and seminary formation by Pope John Paul II, culminating with the publication in 1992 of Pastores Dabo Vobis.

As several priests and bishops told us, discussions about the "causes" of the current crisis often are seen as an opportunity to rehash old arguments about Vatican II and the other developments summarized above. As one bishop put it, echoing the comments of the bishop quoted above, those of a "conservative bent" lay the blame for the crisis on changes made at Vatican II and the culture of dissent, whereas the "progressives" lay the blame for the crisis on the failure to implement the reforms of Vatican II. There is, he added, a "little truth" in both points of view.

Despite the predictable liberal/conservative dichotomy, however, there is a surprising amount of consensus across the "political" spectrum regarding the issues underlying the crisis. The commonality of view among the broad range of people interviewed by the Review Board, in fact, gives credibility to the conclusions that the Board members reached as a result of their investigation.

The Review Board has determined that any discussion of the "causes and context" must address certain issues relating to the selection of candidates for the priesthood and to the formation of priests, as well as special issues relating to sexual orientation, celibacy, and spiritual life. Each of these subjects is discussed below.


# 50. The next step for the bishops and the Board is to commission a broad-based and multi-year study of the epidemic of abuse that the John Jay College study describes. It is hoped that such a study will identify the interactive causal factors in a systematic, epidemiological (host/victim-agent/predator-environ¬ment/culture) fashion. Such a study will enable the Church to develop additional policies for the protection of children and also will bring light to the factors that lead to child abuse in society at large and the steps that can be taken to protect children from the physical and psychological trauma of sexual abuse in the future.