William P. Leahy Quotes

You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what’s that’s done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.

What we’re about is a manifestation of the Catholic roots of Boston College.

What I think we can do is help individuals understand the church teaching, but also maybe help the church understand the viewpoint of lay men and women about what they want in regard to priests, or how do they want the hierarchy to deal with them?

We’ve always had issues up for discussion at Catholic universities.

We are the meeting place, an entity that’s trying to connect faith and culture.

This is a crisis, but there is an opportunity to help revitalize and renew the Catholic community.

The Spirit hasn’t deserted the church today.

The more we can get together and talk about various perspectives, feelings, beliefs, the better.

The hierarchy shouldn’t fear what we’re doing.

The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.

Some of the speakers we bring on campus may not reflect official church teaching, but that’s how it is.

Others don’t want to listen to viewpoints that members of the church have.

One of the biggest issues that we face is that we have people who have their own particular concerns, whether it’s on abortion, birth control, divorce and remarriage, civil rights or social justice.

Now where people are – at least the people I talk to – they are focused on issues of trust. Accountability also comes up, to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

No organization, whether it’s police or physicians or whatever, wants to have its errors held up to the light of day, but it’s wrong, as is coming out so well.

Individuals will speak their minds, which I think is healthy.

I would say the hierarchy has made terrible errors in judgment and it has to seek forgiveness by its members.

I would be with those who say the hierarchy in the United States has badly mishandled this whole situation.

I think we can work through a lot of these issues.

I think the issue of clergy sexual abuse sparked people to look at their faith in a different way.