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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created:July 30, 2002
Latest Update: August 10, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Answerability of the Church

Teaching Essay Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, July 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Is the Church Dying? Sex abuse is just the symptom. Link added July 30, 2002. Backup.

"I think it's fair to say that very few people in my generation of 40-year-olds and younger can take the church's sexual teachings very seriously again. When so many church leaders could not treat even the raping of children as a serious offense, how can we trust them to tell us what to believe about the more esoteric questions of contraception, or homosexuality, or divorce? . . . We kneel and pray; we donate our time and money; we have attempted to explain the moral lessons we have learned in the real world of family and sex and work and conflict. But so many church leaders - from the Pope on down - do not seem to hear or even care. And why should they? They are not answerable to us."

One of Andrew Sullivan's main points is that answerability is essential to real community, and that the church has been largely engaging in monologic non-answerability.