Over at the Huffington Post, Sister Mary Ann Walsh takes on the charge that the John Jay Report mistakenly blamed the culture of the '60s for the sex abuse scandal, a simplistic misreading of the report to be sure.
Sr. Mary Ann rightly notes that nothing in any ambient culture can be seen to "justify" sex abuse but that in seeking to understand how and why the sex abuse crisis happened, you cannot ignore the ambient culture either.
Most importantly, she states clearly that there can be no excuses, cultural or otherwise, and that now that the silence surrounding sex abuse has been broken, and vigilance is not only encouraged by taught, we are on the path to recovery.
Are we 100 percent? No. But, progress has been made which makes the egregious exceptions to that progress in Philadelphia, Kansas City and Gallup all the more alarming.
