To prevent abuse and coverups, the church needs to empower laypeople

Eight years ago, I announced that one of my predecessors as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North­western Pennsylvania had abused young girls at a diocesan summer camp and in other church settings more than 30 years ago. The demands for reform that I hear many Roman Catholic leaders expressing in the wake of the Penn­sylvania grand jury’s report are familiar to me, because I have made them too. But in the years since I first disclosed both my predecessor’s abuse and the failure of our hierarchy’s response, I have learned that far more than reform is needed.

The Roman Catholic leaders I know are good men who are entirely sincere in their grief, anger, and insistence that they will reform the church and eliminate sexual abuse in the ranks of clergy and laypeople. But putting good men—and in my church’s case, good women—in power isn’t enough. The way in which churches govern themselves and distribute power is fundamentally flawed.

Although the channels through which authority is exercised in denominations varies, most clergy are taught some version of the idea that the church is an institution ordained by God to do God’s saving work in the world. This belief sometimes leads the church’s leaders to protect its reputation at the expense of a more fundamental Christian call to tell the truth. When clergy are confronted with abuse and cover-ups committed by colleagues, mentors, and friends, the urge to keep the institution’s secrets—to pray for forgiveness rather than taking action—is powerful. Like corporations, churches hide abuse to preserve money and reputation, but the problem goes beyond that. The church refuses to confess its transgressions because it believes that to do so would compromise its ability to carry out God’s mission in the world and would reveal it to be a human institution that is not immune to human sinfulness.