OTTAWA, Canada (CNS): The Catholic Church is going through troubled times because of the sex abuse scandal in the United States and needs some ‘profound soul-searching’, said the president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
‘There are other eras in which similar crises have hit the Church and the Church – through the presence of the Spirit – has been able to not only maintain her life but also to increase it through the suffering, the purification that takes place,’ said council president, Cardinal J. Francis Stafford.
‘This is a time of profound soul-searching among members of the lay faithful, the priests, the bishops and, of course, the Roman Curia,’ Cardinal Stafford said. He said such a period of soul-searching would be for the eventual ‘common good of the Church’.
