1 1 Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse Meets the Civil Law by Thomas P ...

scripture and events in Church history. 322
There is ample evidence of the abuse of clerical power throughout Western
history. This abuse gave rise to anti-clerical sentiment in several countries where the
Catholic Church had accumulated vast economic, political, and social power. Although
clericalism and anti-clericalism existed from the earliest years of the Church, the
scholarly study of the theological and social dimensions of these twin phenomena tends
to focus on the late medieval and reformation periods of Europe. 323 Studies have also
been done on anti-clericalism in the Spanish colonies of the New World and in
Nineteenth and early Twentieth century Mexico. 324
Some of the most vocal critics of medieval and pre-Reformation clerical abuses
were themselves members of the clerical estate, including Martin Luther, a one-time
Augustinian Monk whose reaction to rampant clerical abuse led to his involvement with
the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther was not an isolated voice of criticism,
although he was perhaps the most prominent critic of his time. A review of some of
Luther’s writings, especially his sermons, illustrates significant parallels with today’s
Church. 325
The Second Vatican Council attempted to revivify the theological concept of the
Church as the “People of God.” 326 Such revolutionary thinking understandably posed a
serious threat to many in the clerical world who argued that the clerical state was
322
Flannery, supra note 317, at 564-65.
323
See Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Peter Dykema & Heiko Oberman
eds., 1993) [hereinafter Dykema & Olberman].
324
See Donald J. Mabry, Mexican Anticlerics, Bishops, Cristeros and the Devout During the 1920’s: A
Scholarly Debate, 20 J. of Church & St. 81-82 (1978).
325
Robert Bast, Anticlericalism, The Law and Social Ethics in Luther’s Sermons on Matthew 22:34-41, in
Dykema & Oberman, supra note 323, at 367-78.
326
See Marie-Joseph le Guillou, History of Ecclesiology, in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise
Sacramentum Mundi 206-09 (Karl Rahner, ed., 1975).
58