An update on the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in the United States and its impact on education

Abstract

The November 10, 2020 publication of the 461-page Report On The Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge And Decision-Making Related To Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930–2017), commonly known as the McCarrick Report, painted an unflattering, if not criminal, picture of the dearth of leadership in the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church. This Report, which describes ‘another tragic chapter in the Church’s long struggle to confront the crimes of sexual abuse by clergy,’ examined the role of the disgraced, laicised, former Cardinal-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C. The Report chronicles McCarrick’s egregious abuse of power as he took advantage of adult males, rather than children, as another dimension of the ongoing scandal that has rocked the American Catholic Church for more than the past quarter of a century.