Can the Church Be Saved?

As allegations of sex abuse--and official cover-up--mount, outraged Roman Catholics are urging their leaders to redeem and reform the faith

The shock is that so many cases have spilled like stained vestments into public view--not just in Boston but in Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., and Philadelphia and Palm Beach, Fla., and Washington and Portland, Maine, and Bridgeport, Conn. The horror is not their singularity but their ghastly similarity: claims of a Roman Catholic priest sexually abusing children, and the church covering it up whether it involves Father Dan or Father Oliver or Father Rocco...

Or Father Brett. Frank Martinelli was an impressionable 14-year-old altar boy who yearned to be a priest. He saw a holy future unfolding when the...

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