IT'S only a quarter over, but mark down 2010 as a bad year for the Vatican.A steady drip of revelations of sexual abuse by clergy and cover-ups by bishops has become a flow, then a torrent.
Hundreds of new allegations are emerging in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, and the stain is spreading right to the top, with serious accusations being levelled against Pope Benedict XVI himself.
Once dismissed as merely an Anglo-Saxon disease, or a hostile media campaign, the avalanche is catastrophic for the Roman Catholic hierarchy's already battered credibility and moral authority.
Last week, Legionaries of Christ officials finally admitted that their Mexican founder, Father Marcial Maciel, a long-term favourite of Pope John Paul II, was not the inspirational exemplar of holiness they had insisted he was, but a sexual predator who abused students and fathered children by at least two women.
Meanwhile, the Pope's apology to Irish Catholics and victims after two devastating secular investigations was widely dismissed as too little, too late.
Now Benedict, once master of the office formerly known as the Inquisition, is facing an inquisition of his own, including strengthening calls for him to resign.
As archbishop of Munich in 1980, did he restore to parish ministry a known paedophile who went on to abuse more children?
As prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, did he insist that all cases come to him under the veil of papal secrecy, sidelining key investigations?
As Pope, has he overseen continued mismanagement that makes protecting the institution the top priority?
As the influential American National Catholic Reporter put it, what did he know, when did he know it, and what did he do about it?
Even when the abuse crisis was largely confined to the US and Australia, a distant decade ago, commentators were calling it the most serious challenge to the church since the Reformation. Now the National Catholic Reporter is suggesting it is the gravest crisis in church history.
That may seem a touch hysterical. After all, no one thinks the church will go out of existence, as it nearly did during the universal persecution of Diocletian in 302-303. But one way or another, it's not going to stay the same.
Former Sydney bishop Geoffrey Robinson says: ''The church itself is not going to fold up its tent and disappear, but there could be very dramatic changes, and in the Western world it could become a much smaller church.''
As far as the accusations against the Pope are concerned, much has yet to emerge - if ever it does. It is plausible that he is both the modern pope most determined to tackle abusers and at the same time a personally culpable failure.
For example, in a powerfully symbolic slap in the face to abuse victims, Benedict has allowed the disgraced former Boston archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, to keep the influential Vatican posts John Paul II gave him when he was forced out by Boston's Catholics.
There's a certain irony that it is Benedict who is facing the music. There is no doubt that, as Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart says, he is ''personally aghast'' that clergy can commit such appalling crimes.
Powerful predators such as Maciel, protected and honoured by John Paul II, were quickly dealt with once Benedict became Pope.
Unlike his predecessor, he understands the heinousness of abuse and its gravity for the church, but he is Pope in an era that is in no mood to allow the prevarications and obfuscations the church has hidden behind for decades.
The church moves slowly, and the modern world is impatient. Yet as Hart conceded this week, there has been a failure of leadership and of courage - though, he says, the church is resolute now.
Hart points out that Benedict removed the statute of limitations on such cases, instituted more careful checks on potential priests and has been ''very proactive in tackling the matter, often in ways that are yet to emerge''.
Other defenders point to his tackling Maciel and introducing a zero tolerance policy. They say that the notorious 2001 letter to the world's bishops directing that all abuse cases be referred to the Vatican has been misunderstood - it was not aimed at covering cases up but ensuring that they were taken seriously at the top level.
Last month, a Vatican prosecutor for the first time gave details about abuse investigations. Monsignor Charles Scicluna said that the 2001 letter unleashed an avalanche of cases, mostly in 2003-04, and that the Vatican had now worked through some 3000 cases.
In the US, where many dioceses are on the verge of bankruptcy, the compensation bill has passed $US2.2 billion. (Apparently, figures are not collected in Australia.)
Nevertheless, inside and outside the church, critics are saying its response is too little, too late.
As The New York Times noted of the Pope's apology last week to Ireland's Catholics, it was strong on forgiveness and weak on accountability.
The National Catholic Reporter, in an editorial demanding that he answer questions directly in a credible forum, pointed out that the first stories emerged when parents took molesting priests to court, having received denial and counter accusation from church officials.
As more victims came forward, an ''uncannily consistent pattern'' emerged. In nearly every case, bishops, faced with accusations of child abuse, denied them, even as they shuffled priests to new parishes and covered up their own actions.
''In the last decade the story has not gone away. Rather it has continuously reared its head in nation after nation, especially in those countries with a free press and independent judicial system [and] without the aid of church hierarchy,'' the editorial says.
''Another part of the pattern of this dispiriting tale is that church officials have never been in front of the story. Always late, always responding and, therefore, at every step of the way losing credibility … Inexorably, a story that began with reports on trials in a few US cities a quarter of a century back has now moved up the Catholic institutional ladder - from priests to bishops to national bishops' conferences and to the Vatican itself.''
The institutional response, as so often, has largely been to shoot the messenger.
A letter to the Opus Dei-funded news agency Zenit by a Father Raymond Camilleri complained that the international media was out to smear the Pope because he was the only voice daring to speak out against such evils as abortion, contraception, euthanasia and divorce. ''The media wants to bring him down. They cannot stand his words and authority.''
The Vatican itself was scarcely less strident. Replying to accusations in The New York Times, an editorial in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said there was no cover-up but rather an ''ignoble attempt'' to wound Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost.
Benedict himself complained in 2002 that there was an intentional, manipulated campaign to discredit the church.
Media defenders reply that, to the contrary, such openness and redress as have been achieved have been won by the media and the courts in the face of frantic opposition from the church.
No one seriously expects the Pope to resign. But belated apologies in which no one is held accountable and the Pope remains buffered from criticism now satisfy only the most ardent church apologists.
What does it mean for the people in the pews? In much of the West, not too much because there is already a very strong disconnect between the faithful and the hierarchy.
According to a leading Melbourne priest, Eric Hodgens (now retired), there are now two Catholic churches, the hierarchical church and local parishes. ''It's amazing how resilient the people in the pews are,'' he says.
''The ones who come to Mass regularly are aware of all this, but what they like is religious life at the local parish level. They'll say 'these are a pack of sods', but the local priest is usually OK, and they don't ever meet the hierarchy.
''The priests are on the side of the people, not the bishops. The cynicism of the priests has been exacerbated by the appointments for 30 years of pro-Vatican people. There's no love lost between the rank and file and the bishops.''
Hodgens believes the church will lurch from crisis to crisis unless the Vatican looks inward. ''The Vatican's official structure is all based on the old hierarchical order. The king can do no wrong, so it has to admit nothing, do everything under pontifical secrecy. But unless they really come clean now it will be drip, drip, drip and will get worse.''
MEANWHILE, lay Catholics are less inclined to accept church authority, and are demanding a bigger role, which, given the crisis in the number of priests, they are are likely to get. ''Silence is compliance,'' a Catholic woman wrote on an English website.
But amid all the flux, Robinson suspects that what will not change is the Vatican itself. The man who headed the Australian church's battle against abuse for a decade before resigning, disillusioned, in 2004, says the Vatican is a very hard place to change.
''The fundamental difference between myself and the other Australian bishops is that they say, in counteracting abuse, you may not criticise any teaching of the church, where I said we must be able to follow the argument wherever it leads.''
The bishops disowned him after he wrote a book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church, arguing that until the Vatican looked at fundamental issues such as celibacy and its own power structures, it was not serious about halting abuse.
Canberra Auxiliary Bishop Pat Power, one of Australia's leading progressive Catholics, sided with Robinson against the bishops, saying the church owes him a great debt. For Power, the solution starts at the grassroots.
''Priests need to listen to parishioners, bishops to priests and the Vatican to bishops and churches,'' he says. ''Too often we let Rome hear what they want to hear rather than what they need to know.
''There's still a lot of really good things happening on the ground. I can't stress enough the importance of being in communion with the church. I'd never advise people to walk away. But when they are not drawing a lot of life from on high, it's important to encourage each other.''
While to most Catholics the abuse crisis is an unmitigated disaster, Power sees a ray of hope.
''It's the possibility of a real moment of grace for the church. My friends in AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] say you have to hit rock bottom before you can climb; you have to find the humility and willingness to change,'' Power says.
''What's opening up is horrific, and a lot of it is systemic, but it's only when we are prepared to acknowledge our responsibility, not only in the individuals but the structures, will we be able to proclaim the message of Christ.''
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