Editor’s Note: Helen Alvaré is a professor of law at George Mason University who has published widely on issues of marriage, family, parenting and First Amendment religion clauses. Her recent book with Cambridge University Press is about putting children’s interests first in US family law. In 2003, she headed an investigation of clerical abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. The views expressed in this commentary are solely hers. View more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) — After the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report on the decadeslong sexual abuse of more than 1,000 child victims by priests in six dioceses, there is horror and there are questions about what comes next. One question I’m hearing and thinking about as a scholar of the Catholic family is whether the report will lead Catholic families or individuals to turn their backs on thousands of years of Catholic teaching about human sexuality. c/o GMU Law Helen Alvaré Even people who have close relationships with priests and bishops they have known and trusted for years might emotionally struggle with the idea that this church can continue to provide guidance on sexual morality. It’s not necessarily a logical response; sexual abuse is a crime of power and exploitation. But it is an understandable one. The Catholic Church, as virtually all religions, exhorts believers to a high standard of sexual behavior. Like every human behavior, but even more so, sex is supposed to abide by the law of love. Our actions must positively promote human well-being, by empowering people to be who God made them to be. The law of love also contains a duty of special care to the vulnerable, especially children. And regarding sexual behavior in particular – which is so fraught with meaning, and so prone to exploitation – the Catholic Church is insistent that because sex makes babies, the well-being of born and unborn children should always be kept in mind in connection with every sexual relationship. But assuming the truth of the grand jury report, many Catholic priests and bishops violated every one of these rules, to a staggering degree. So what will Catholic families do with their thorny questions about sex in a world busy hypersexualizing their kids, retreating from marriage, and too often ridiculing morality that links sex with marriage and children? I am frankly of two minds on this question. Some Catholics will firmly, explicitly close the door on Catholic sources of sexual morality, yes. And it will be difficult or impossible to woo them back. But speaking as a Catholic mother of long experience with Catholic parishes and schools, and speaking as a family scholar who has visited and addressed Catholics in nearly every US diocese over the last 30 years, this first group may not represent the majority of Catholics. I say this for two reasons. First, the Catholic laity are more knowledgeable and sophisticated about healthy approaches to sex and sexuality than many people realize. They have had to be, given the #MeToo world we live in. They are also convinced – and social science agrees with them – that kids attached to their faith will make loving and more responsible sexual choices. They have been assisted immensely over especially the last 40 years by the brilliant teachings of St. John Paul II about the theology of the human body. Many of the laity have therefore appropriated Catholic teachings for themselves in order to secure their own happiness and freedom and that of their children. It’s a jungle out there as a Catholic parent, and if you don’t have a reasonable, compassionate reply to your kids, you’re pretty much toast when it comes to passing on Catholic morality. Second, I don’t think the majority of Catholics were looking to particular priests or bishops for their sexual morality. Most Catholics don’t read encyclicals, bishops’ pastoral letters, or their local Catholic paper. Most homilies are not about sexual morality. And from personal experience, the homilies that do touch upon it are not grappling with especially young adults’ urgent and foundational questions: Why is sex more than recreation? Why is marriage more loving than cohabitation? How can I welcome children in the world as it is today? Instead, a lot of Catholic families look to other families’ experiences. They also look to a wide array of lay-founded Catholic groups with websites, conferences, and educational materials. These might include Ruah Woods, the Theology of the Body Institute, and others. Having traveled around the United States and spoken to innumerable parents and families, I can see clearly that they are not waiting to be instructed on matters so deeply affecting their kids’ and families’ well-being. They are seeking it out, and finding it provided, usually by lay Catholic experts. Get our free weekly newsletter Sign up for CNN Opinion's new newsletter. Join us on Twitter and Facebook The Catholic Church has no one to blame but itself for the loss of trust the Pennsylvania report will provoke. At the same time, however, in a world of expert, lay-Catholic initiatives framing and teaching the beauty of Catholic sexual morality, some Catholics will continue to hold themselves to these standards, and to pass them on to their children.<doc-sep>It is time to face the horrible truth: The Catholic church is a pedophile ring. According to the grand jury report of six dioceses in Pennsylvania, over a period of 70 years, 300 priests abused over 1,000 children in Pennsylvania and church officials repeatedly covered it up. The release of the report is a searing indictment of the filth that has existed in the Catholic church. Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades. If you think this statement is hyperbole, consider that the grand jury report includes, but is by no means limited to, the case of a ring of pedophile priests in Pittsburgh, who raped their male victims, took pornographic pictures of them and marked them by giving them gold crosses to wear so that they could be easily recognized by other abusers. At an emotional news conference Tuesday, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro stood before some of the victims of the abuse in the six Pennsylvania dioceses (which include Pittsburgh and the state capital Harrisburg). Announcing the report, Shapiro said that, for the first time, “we can begin to understand the systematic coverup of church officials.” The report was written by 23 grand jurors wrote over the course of two years, and is very clear about how the authorities of the church protected the clergy while further abusing victims with payoffs, silencing and attempts to denigrate their character. Two cardinals, Cardinal Wuerl and the now-deceased Cardinal Bevilacqua (who also figured prominently in the Philadelphia grand jury report), are among those who disciplined but moved around clergy who sexually abused children. While this report covers only six dioceses in Pennsylvania (there are eight in total, but the archdioceses of Philadelphia and the diocese of Altoona-Johnston were the subject of three previous grand jury investigations), it is breathtakingly horrific in documenting the scope of sexual abuse of children. It chronicles in detail how the Catholic hierarchy from the diocese to the Vatican worked not only mitigate the church's legal exposure, but to maintain strategies to “avoid scandal.” Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades. These strategies used to subvert stories of abuse were so common that the FBI reviewed a significant portion of the evidence collected and received by the grand jury and found a series of practices engaged in by church leaders to conceal the truth. For instance, church authorities who documented the cases for internal use never used the word "rape," only “inappropriate contact.” Investigations were conducted by other clergy members, rather than trained personnel. Church-run health centers, not lay psychiatric facilities, were used to examine priests accused of pedophilia. Housing and funds were provided for priests, even when it was known they were raping children. Priests were moved from the area only if their communities found out, to other communities where the abusers and abuses were not known. Most importantly, the hierarchy was instructed to not inform law enforcement about abuses reported by parishioners, but to consider any such case an “internal personnel matter.” These practices sanctioned by the church hierarchy allowed the abuse of children to continue. The grand jury report is also rife with horror upon horror — anal rape, fondling, oral sex, child pornography, pregnancies, suicides — perpetrated upon children by priests, who were then moved about by church leaders who knew full well the despicable deeds they had done to children, and often did again. For instance, one woman was raped by a priest at the age of seven in her hospital room after surgery on her tonsils, was raped again by the same priest at age 13, and then again at age 19 while pregnant; she considered suicide. What was the priest's punishment for that and the other rapes and molestations to which he admitted? Bishop Ronald Gainer of Harrisburg, in submitting the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated: “I believe the scandal caused by his admission of the sexual abuse of minor girls has been sufficiently repaired by acceptance of the penal precept.” In other words, Gainer did not want the priest defrocked and so, as punishment, The Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith decided, after reviewing his file, that the priest in question should lead a life of prayer and penance. Prayer, and penance. An inadequate, paltry response for repeatedly raping a child. What is clear from this report — as well as the previous grand jury reports from Philadelphia in 2005 and 2011 and Altoona-Johnston in 2016 — is that the Catholic church cannot be and never should have been trusted nor expected to root out pedophiles in the midst, let alone punish them appropriately. Mercy was not extended to victims, but to perpetrators. Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars. The former were supposed to refrain from premarital sex, same-sex relationships, abortions and masturbation. The sexual prohibitions of the church did not extend to the clergy raping children, and priests in Pennsylvania even got a pass for paying for abortions for young girls they raped and got pregnant. Adding insult to injury, the Catholic church in Pennsylvania is currently fighting an effort by Rep. Mark Rozzi, himself a victim of clergy sexual abuse, to have the civil statute of limitation in such cases eliminated. Currently, victims can file civil claims until the age of 30 and criminal claims until the age of 50; the church supports the latter but opposes the former. Once again, the desire to protect the church, not the victims of the clergy, continues to be the priority for bishops and cardinals in the Catholic Church. Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars. It is long past time for not only abusive priests, but monsignors, bishops and cardinals to be held accountable by local, state and federal law enforcement for their crimes against children. To date, the only administrator convicted of any crime was Monsignor William Lynn of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, whose conviction was subsequently overturned, and has been scheduled for retrial. But most of those who habitually moved abusers, such as Cardinal Wuerl, enjoy the prestige and perks of being high-ranking clergy, while many abused children must try to manage their physical and psychological pain. What the now-multiple Pennsylvania grand jury reports show clearly is that the Roman Catholic church has treated the protection of its pedophiles, rapists and sexual abusers as their highest priority. They have been unwilling and unable to police clergy sexual abuse while determined to keep responsibility for doing so within the Church — but they don't want to be held accountable for mishandling it. Like a criminal syndicate, it is time for the Church to be broken apart and cleaned out.<doc-sep>
CARLISLE, Pa. — The Rev. Martin Moran raced through an early morning drizzle after the 8 a.m. Mass on Sunday at the 19th-century St. Patrick Shrine Church here. He was on his way to the outskirts of town to speak at the tail end of the 9 a.m. Mass at the large modern St. Patrick Church. In both red-brick buildings, his message was the same: apologies for the horrific sexual abuse suffered by children at the hands of clergy and promises to help his congregation through a time that could shake their faith. The grand jury report released last week alleged that 301 priests in Pennsylvania abused as many as 1,000 children over 70 years in parishes much like this one, and it has shaken the state's Roman Catholics. Moran, a large, gregarious man with a mother from Italy and a father from Ireland, is responsible for three morning Masses — one at the shrine church and two at the newer house of worship — each Sunday in this Pennsylvania parish that serves around 2,350 households and 5,000 people. He does so with the help of a recently ordained priest, who administered the 9 a.m. service, and a retired Army chaplain, who led the 8 a.m. Mass. While those in the congregation have struggled to reconcile with the pervasive and appalling abuse detailed in the report, the revelations also marked a difficult time for priests in the church as a whole. Moran noted that he knew 68 of the names in the grand jury’s findings and had reported a few of them himself. He said the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, the body that oversees this parish as well as 88 others across 15 counties of central Pennsylvania, had removed the priest or conducted an investigation on each occasion that he reported an individual. The Rev. Martin Moran of St. Patrick Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Sean Simmers for NBC News “We don’t have all the answers," Moran told the congregation at the 9 a.m. Mass on Sunday. "We’re as shocked as you are in many cases." This parish was served by three of the 301 priests named in the report since the 1950s, but allegations surrounding their conduct while at this church only came up in the case of the Rev. Anthony McGinley, who was forced to resign his post in Carlisle in April 1970 after allegations surfaced of molestation throughout his career. He was allowed to attend graduate school for guidance counseling before he was forced to retire and had his priestly faculties revoked by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg in 1987. McGinley died in 2006. Those are the types of allegations that are now haunting a holy calling. And it’s the magnitude of the abuse — the sheer numbers of clergy members involved and how close many abusers were — that has left pastors reeling after the report’s release. “I think often about what I’ve been praying for the past 30 years of my priesthood for all victims of sexual abuse, especially for those who have been abused within the church,” Moran told the parish at the end of the 9 a.m. service on Sunday. “If you’re a survivor of abuse our prayers go out to you because we don’t have the words of true healing for you. All we can say is that we’re with you and your prayerful support in any way that we could help you.” After the 8 a.m. Mass at the old St. Patrick’s Shrine Church, the Rev. Greg D’Emma hung up his vestments and leaned against a vanity as he considered the grand jury report. D’Emma, who has spent 48 years in the priesthood, is not technically part of the Harrisburg diocese, but chose to retire here in Carlisle after serving 37 years in the military — nearly 10 of which were spent in this town at the U.S. Army War College less than two miles away. St. Patrick Church in Carlisle, Pa. Sean Simmers for NBC News D’Emma recalled that as a child, he and six other altar boys used to spend a lot of time with their priest — a young man who took them to the movies, the seminary or the beach — but there was never a hint of anything untoward about the experience. That relationship with his pastor ultimately led him and one of the other boys to the priesthood, which is what makes this report particularly difficult for him.