Awareness and Purification

For four days in February 2019, the Church and the whole world watched as bishops from all over the globe, representatives of male and female religious orders, and some lay people all came together with Pope Francis. Their purpose: to face head-on the tragedy of clergy sexual abuse, and to work together on responsibility, accountability, and transparency.

This book brings you the full texts of that meeting. Here are the searing testimonies of victims. Here are the bishops calling on the whole episcopacy to recognize this not as a “regional” problem but a global one. Here is the Church struggling to take real first steps to come up with practical ways, in a canonical structure, to hold bishops and other leaders responsible.

Full of clear, forceful language, this book shows Church leaders facing and wrestling with the question Archbishop Naameh of Ghana raises: “What must we do differently, and where should we start?”

The same question faces leaders in every parish: What must we do differently, and where should we start? Every parish needs this book. Reading and discussing these historic texts from this ground-breaking, and long-overdue meeting would be a great step forward for us all.

* Free Awareness and Purification Group Study Guide *

We are offering a FREE downloadable resource with this book. The Awareness and Purification Group Study Guide will help parish and pastoral leaders break open this text for parish/university/study groups who may want to go deeper into the issues raised and challenge themselves—and the church (local, universal)—to a sense of purpose and transformational action in the midst of these challenging times. The guide carefully follows each session from that three-day meeting and offers reflection points and probing questions for discussion. It also contains a helpful “How to use this study guide” section that provides clear suggestions for leading sessions on potentially sensitive topics.