Crisis in the Church

It is the honor and responsibility of a Catholic University to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth. This is its way of serving at one and the same time both the dignity of humankind and the good of the Church, which has “an intimate conviction that truth is (its) real ally ... and that knowledge and reason are sure ministers to faith.” (From Ex Corde Ecclesiae, quoting John Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University.)

 

In August 2018, the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church surfaced again, even more dramatically, when a grand jury in Pennsylvania reported on the patterns of abuse, cover up, ineptitude, and at times malfeasance on the part of the bishops in six Catholic dioceses in the state. A separate scandal related to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, appointed cardinal by John Paul II in 2001, further accentuated a clerical subculture of corruption. The situation was not new, but the extent and depth of it were.

Fr. Pat Howell, SJ, Interim Director of the ICTC, led the effort in the 2018-19 academic year to address this “Crisis in the Church.”

Church in Crisis Events

ICTC Statements

Read more about the Crisis