Illustration by Tom Bachtell

For a moment, it looked as if Cardinal Roger Mahony, of Los Angeles, might be excluded from the conclave that gathers this week to select a new Pope. Under a settlement with some five hundred plaintiffs, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had been forced to release the records of its dealings with priests accused of sexually abusing children. The settlement was reached in 2007; the Church finally released the records in January. There were twelve thousand pages, and they revealed a by now dispiritingly familiar picture: years of shielding accused priests from criminal charges, and a concern for the reputation of the Church that too often trumped empathy for the victims. Mahony was then the archbishop, and he and other Church officials exchanged letter after letter about one priest, recommending that he stay away from L.A., where he might attract unwanted attention, presumably from the law; he eventually admitted to molesting the children of undocumented immigrants, and allegedly threatened at least one of them with deportation if he told. Meanwhile, the Church provided the priest with residential treatment and a position in another state.

José Gomez, who in 2011 succeeded Mahony as archbishop, took the unusual step of stripping him of his public duties. The L.A.P.D. announced that it was examining the records to see if new prosecutions were warranted. A group called Catholics United collected thousands of signatures for a petition asking that Mahony recuse himself from the conclave. But last week, as Pope Benedict XVI was preparing to step down, Mahony was sending sprightly tweets from the Vatican: “Good weather forecast for this week in Rome; no rain. Mid 50s during the day, upper 30s at night. Great Holy Spirit weather!!”

Mahony’s defenders say that he is being singled out, and they have a point. Anne Burke, an Illinois judge who served on the Catholic Bishops’ advisory board, told the Times that too many Church leaders had “participated in one way or another in having actual information about criminal conduct, and not doing anything. What are you going to do? They’re all not going to participate in the conclave?”

Those who say that the Catholic Church has been unfairly pilloried are also right. Estimates are hard to come by, and underreporting of the sexual abuse of children is a chronic problem, but, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and conducted by researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, about four per cent of Catholic priests have been accused of molesting children. That is probably comparable to percentages in other denominations and in the general population.

What is distinctive about child abuse in the Catholic Church is not its existence, or even its coverup; in recent months alone, we’ve seen evidence of similar cowardice at Penn State and the BBC. What is distinctive is that Catholic officials can find a higher purpose—protecting the sanctity of the priesthood—in shielding abusers, and a spiritually rewarding humility in enduring criticism of their conduct. Mahony has been blogging about the public disparagement he has received, and he compares it to what Christ withstood, urging the faithful to join him in exploring what it is to “take up our cross daily and to follow Jesus—in rejection, in humiliation, and in personal attack.” But, unlike the criminal prosecution of perpetrators—or real Church reform—that doesn’t do much to help victims or to prevent abuse.

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger assumed the papacy, in 2005, it seemed that he might take on the abuse scandal in a way that his predecessor had not. He met with victims in the United States and the United Kingdom, apologizing and expressing “shame and humiliation.” In 2011, he instructed bishops to make a priority of rooting out sexual abuse by clerics. But he did not dismiss bishops who had looked the other way, and he did not inaugurate an accountability at the highest levels, as the abused and their advocates had hoped.

Benedict’s term, in fact, has been characterized by an intensifying disapproval of would-be reformers. In a homily last spring, the Pope denounced the efforts of a reforming priest in Austria, where a hundred and fifty thousand Catholics have left the Church in response to revelations of sex abuse in that country, and called upon Catholics to embrace instead “the radicalism of obedience.” Last fall, the Vatican dismissed an American priest who had participated in an ordination ceremony for a woman. The Church is doctrinally immune from majority rule, so perhaps it doesn’t matter that, according to a 2010 Times poll, sixty-seven per cent of American Catholics think priests should be allowed to marry and fifty-nine per cent think women should be allowed to be priests. Yet surely a Church that expels a priest for advocating women’s ordination faster than it does men who have been credibly accused of raping children is in some kind of trouble.

All the more so since a case can be made that the banning of women from the priesthood is a matter of tradition rather than of Scripture. (In 1976, the Pontifical Biblical Commission voted in favor of the idea that the Church could ordain women without countermanding Christ’s intentions.) One can sympathize with the idea that not everything done in the Church these days should be framed as a fix for the scandal, and that the Church and its good works should not be reduced to this one terrible theme. There is also some evidence that the incidence of abuse has declined since the nineteen-eighties. Yet it might not have continued unchecked in the first place if the Church had put women in leadership positions and eliminated the requirement of celibacy. Women are statistically less likely to sexually abuse children, and they would have helped open up an insular and self-protecting brotherhood. And, without the requirement of celibacy, some men drawn to it because they thought it would cure them of unwanted urges might not have sought refuge in the priesthood.

In addition, celibacy is perhaps too harsh and too unsustainable a demand for many who would otherwise be fit for the priesthood. Last month, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, made headlines when he said that “many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood and felt the need of a companion.” That was just before he made headlines by resigning, amid allegations that he had had “inappropriate contact” with other priests. (Unlike Mahony, O’Brien is staying away from Rome.) And it was right around the time that the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that the real reason Benedict resigned was that gay prelates at the Vatican were being blackmailed. (The Vatican denied any connection.) But celibacy conferred—and, despite everything, probably still confers—an aura of purity, of exalted separateness, that protected priests from suspicion, and earned them the sometimes undeserved trust of parents and children.

Nobody really seems to believe that this conclave will pick a Pope who would consider removing leaders like Mahony or ordaining women or allowing priests to marry. But so many people worldwide—especially those who have been ignored, mistreated, or excluded by a Church they love—would rejoice if it did. ♦