I'm generally a fan of Pope Francis' theology. Reorienting the Catholic Church away from finger wagging about divorce and birth control towards a more compassionate ministry is long overdue.
However, it remains clear that the Church is not able to and should be allowed to police itself. Yet that remains the default position. Because the Church is - on a theological level - infallible, it cannot allow outside investigators to poke about in its business. The problem, obviously, is that it was precisely this exemption from scrutiny that led to centuries of sexual abuse.
There are obvious correlations between a "celibate" priesthood and sexual dysfunction. There's just a massive potential for problems, when you shut off a critical aspect of human life from people who are then given authority over others. All because St. Augustine was a crank and Pope Gregory didn't want priests to hand down their parishes to their children. It's theologically indefensible and had created a crisis in the Catholic Church. Yes, Protestant ministers have commited similar acts, but most of those seem to be lumped in the same sort of patriarchal power structures of the evangelical movement.
The Church could address this issue by allowing priests to marry or ordaining women. It won't. It could clean house by allowing outside, neutral arbiters to examine the crimes of the clergy. It won't. It could turn over church officials hiding in the Vatican. It hasn't.
Until then, it's all bullshit, and however much I admire Francis' profession of a new ethics, he's a failure.
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