Catholic leaders have left state officials with no choice but to investigate the Church in America.

This could be a very good thing. It could also go south very quickly.

The New York State Attorney General’s office announced on Sept. 6 that it had subpoenaed the state’s eight Catholic dioceses as part of a broader civil investigation into whether church leaders covered up allegations of clergy sexual abuse. On the very same day that New York announced its investigation, New Jersey's attorney general announced a criminal investigation into allegations of cover-ups in the Garden State's Catholic dioceses. Earlier, law enforcement officials in Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, and New Mexico opened investigations into possible abuse and cover-up by Church leaders in their respective states.

These actions are a direct response to an Aug. 14 Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing the secret history of child sexual abuse in the state’s eight dioceses. The report is as thorough as it is grisly and haunting.

As investigations continue to crop up at the state level, Catholic leadership continues to dither, with many either playing dumb or revealing a shocking lack of concern. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, for example, reiterated his belief this weekend that the sex abuse scandal is a distraction from the issues that really matter.

“I feel very much at peace at this moment. I am sleeping OK,” he told a group of seminarians, according to the Chicago-Sun Times.

Though the Church’s “agenda” does indeed include protecting children, Cupich said, “we have a bigger agenda than to be distracted by all of this.” The cardinal told the group that the bigger “agenda” includes helping the homeless and the sick. But the only thing sick here is the idea that you can support "social justice" without supporting justice for the abusers who have stained the Church and their victims whose faith they have weakened or destroyed.

While leaders like Cupich and their fans continue to pretend this evil isn’t as deep-rooted and institutional as it clearly is, the Vatican continues to slow-walk its response to allegations that Pope Francis himself enabled known sexual abusers.

The pope and his team are prepping the “ necessary clarifications” to an 11-page letter written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, Vatican officials announced 16 days after the pope was first accused of knowingly empowered abusers. Among other things, he turned to disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, credibly accused of sexually abusing seminarians and minors, to help him choose Cupich and other bishops in the U.S.

The Holy See “is working on formulating potential and necessary clarifications,” they said.

This maddening "update" comes after the usually chatty Francis dismissed the allegations, saying “I will not say a single word on this.”

Meanwhile, the pope’s nine cardinal advisers have expressed “full solidarity” with Francis over the child sexual abuse scandal, because voicing their support now is more important than getting the Bishop of Rome to respond to allegations he backed a known abuser of children.

All of this is to say: Church leaders have demonstrated repeatedly that they are not up to the task of curing the cancer of clergy sexual abuse. If they’re not already complicit in this grave evil, they’re either too cowardly or too obtuse to be relied upon. This has left a vacuum of responsibility, which state law enforcement officials are all too happy to fill.

And honestly, as a Catholic, I’m having a mixed reaction to all of this. The small-government, Roman Catholic side of me is wary of any rush by attorney generals to bring the state’s authority against the Church. Progressive and/or anti-religious zealots in government could easily hijack public support for transparency to antagonize Catholicism itself or organized religion in general. It’s not as if anti-Catholic bigotry in government is a rarity nowadays.

On the other hand, it’s a moral imperative that clergy sex abuse be pulled up by its roots, the perpetrators publicly disgraced, punished, and removed from positions of trust in the Church. It’s a moral imperative that the victims see justice done and that would-be victims are rescued from abuse. Someone needs to investigate clergy sexual abuse, and Church leaders aren't up to the job. If the path to uprooting what leadership has allowed to flourish in darkness involves subpoenaing every diocese in America, then let's get it over with now.

I never thought I’d see the day when I would have somewhat positive feelings about the state going up against the Catholic Church hierarchy. Then again, in Christ all things are made possible.