Quotes from James Carroll

Experience is a flow from event to consequence, with moral events defined by human choice.

God suffers with you!

Indeed, an ecumenical spirit extending to the worldly, to the flawed, to the politically compromised, and to the sexually stigmatized was what separated Jesus from his rigorously puritanical mentor.

A naive belief in supernatural powers has been dispelled

The I AM of God, of Jesus, is the "I am" of every person, and it consists in every person being aware of herself or himself.

Human tragedy, of its essence, consists in the denigration of what is in the name of what is to come

Mindful imitation makes Christ actual.

The God who makes the promise keeps the promise.

To each one, the encounter with Jesus is unique, however it occurs. That no one possesses Jesus, or fully understands him, is why the movement toward Jesus can never be made alone.

Clericalism is the pyramid, a structure of domination that must be protected at all costs by everyone occupying a niche in it — which is why bishops and most priests so routinely shield the clerical abusers instead of their victims.

It was when Francis repeatedly failed in his response to the unchecked current of accusation and revelation — not just regarding priests as predators, but especially with bishops as enablers, and with bishops and Cardinals as predators, too — that I was forced to undertake a deeper and more comprehensive reckoning.

Francis has a tragic blind spot — the corruption of clericalism….

Pope Francis routinely expresses his shame and sorrow, but he instinctively defends the accused; he denounces the clerical culture in which abuse has found its hospitable niche, but he does nothing to dismantle it. Indeed, in his instinctive protective responses to the corruption of clericalism, he embodies that culture, even while seeming to criticize it.

The debasement of Catholic morality when it comes to women, power, and sex is perfectly captured in the fact that the Church's Canon law provides for the ex post facto excommunication of a woman who attempts to say mass. There is no such penalty for a pedophile priest.

Francis is at the mercy of an incoherent Catholic morality about all kinds of sexual expression, and he seems incapable of bringing the needed moral clarity and essential new structure of accountability. That incoherence in ethics and morality is itself essential to the malignant culture of clericalism that imprisons many, including the Pope.