In 2005 a grand jury report from Philadelphia tainted those memories, naming as it did two sexually abusive priests who had served at my parish and several more who taught at my high school. Even in the midst of so much grace, it turned out, sin had abounded, and I wept for the victims, who had been my classmates and neighbors.

Tuesday’s grand jury report, which involves six other Pennsylvania dioceses, has also devastated me personally. Many names are familiar: I attended college in one diocese, and have researched and written about two others. Above all, I know Pennsylvania Catholics, who are generally more inclined than Catholics from elsewhere to place Father or Monsignor or Bishop on a pedestal and deem him above criticism or even suspicion. The consequences of gullibility, to our shame, are made manifest in the report.

I mourned privately 13 years ago, but today I state publicly that the church must come to terms with the sins of its past and reform itself so thoroughly that they will never be repeated in the future. People can point out, and they surely will, that the Catholic Church has not cornered the market on sexual abuse of children and young people. Yes, I realize that. Nonetheless, it is clear that the scale of the abuse is magnified in an institution whose leaders time and again chose self-preservation over the protection of the most vulnerable people entrusted to their care.

People will say that there is still holiness in the church, that there are many priests and bishops with good and pure hearts, and they are right. But there are times when the sin is so pervasive and corrosive that it is irresponsible to talk about anything else, and this is one of those times. My once-polite requests for incremental reform have morphed overnight into demands that church leaders voluntarily relinquish their place at the head table.

Imagine hearing abdications of power along the following lines in Sunday homilies, in diocesan news conferences, or in statements from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

“We were granted privileges because we were meant to represent Jesus Christ on earth. But Jesus said that we should humble ourselves like little children if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and also that anyone who harms a little one ‘would be better drowned in the depths of the sea with a great millstone around his neck.’ We are no longer worthy of your sacred trust.