The ignorance about the Church is massive. For large numbers of people, the only known facts about Catholic belief is that Catholics are against abortion and that the Church “hates gays”. There is very little general knowledge about the basic tenets of the Creed: God becoming man and living among us, dying and rising again and establishing for eternity the bond between humanity and God planned by God from “the beginning”.

 

All of that would be bad enough. But of course there is more. There is a general vague notion that “hundreds and hundreds” of Catholic priests have routinely subjected children to sexual abuse and that nothing has ever been done about it.

 

And in discussing the whole ghastly topic of sex abuse, the prospects of getting a fair hearing are not great. Nor should we complain about that: if the hearer assumes that we are going to defend evil behaviour, he is obviously not going to make much effort to listen to us. It is no use beginning the conversation by noting that the number of priests who have ever been involved in this evil is tiny – far smaller than in any other comparable profession. It just doesn’t matter. The retort will probably something along the lines of “one is one too many” – a cliché which, like most clichés, is true. It is crucial to establish that this evil behaviour shames the Church and is a source of penitence for every Catholic, and to seize the opportunity to get to the heart of things and note that we rightly call priests to a far higher standard than any one else, and ask why. We can then start talking about what a priest is, and whether or not there is a God, and why and how we know about good and evil, right and wrong. We can note in passing the truth that the number of priests who have been involved in this evil is tiny: but simply re-stating that will not help to get people nearer to Christ.