In a posting on Catholic News Network, the editor makes the following remark: "The sex-abuse crisis within the Catholic Church was brought on in large part by a collapse in the traditions of ascetical discipline, especially among the clergy. That is the argument of an important book about the crisis, and after years of research on the topic, I find that argument persuasive."
After Ascetism: Sex, Prayer, and Deviant Priests is the title of the book prepared by Linacre Institute. The following is a sentence from the forward to the book which Linacre authorized to CWNews: The truth is that the deficiencies that caused the scandal were not merely rooted in a few disturbed individuals, but rather, were common deficiencies and aberrations in the religious purpose and intellectual formation of priests dating back to at least the 1950s.
