It has been a news week quite unlike any other I have experienced in more than 20 years of Catholic journalism.

I have never seen so many "ordinary Catholics" — who usually never follow or hear about Church news — as deeply troubled as I have seen them in response to the recent revelations about the retired archbishop of Washington, DC.

Is the Church doing enough?

Is it over? Yes and no. It was 10 years ago this month that the sexual abuse crisis exploded in the archdiocese of Boston, with reverberations across the world.

The headline at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website: John Jay College "Reports No Single Cause, Predictor of Clergy Abuse."  So after all the years, money, and study, are we to conclude there is no conclusion?

The Christmas statement that Benedict XVI made to his official entourage was of particular gravity, precisely because it represents one of his most thorough and insightful assessments of the clerical sex abuse scandal.

This year marks my fifth anniversary in the Victim Assistance Program of the Diocese of Arlington. I approached Pat Mudd 25 years after being sexually and emotionally abused by priests as a child and teen.

Once again were living in scandal times.

Clerical abuse had been recognized for centuries as a grievous but fortunately uncommon failing. In previous ages, when it came to light Church leaders were inclined to deal with it openly and to punish abusers severely.

In a pattern exemplifying the dog's behavior in Proverbs 26:11, the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young, with hints of an ecclesiastical criminal conspiracy involving sexual predators whose predations continue today.