ABSTRACT
Clergy sex abuse is a model example of a social problem that appears to undergo mushroom growth, receiving virtually no attention from media or policymakers before about 1984. At mid-century, the mass media exercised considerable restraint in investigating or reporting news stories involving scandals in mainstream churches. Feminist activists and theologians attempted to incorporate concepts of abuse, battering, and victimization into their critique of religious patriarchy, and in the literature, child sexual abuse becomes a paradigm of social injustice and absolute sin. In 1989, an impressive range of leading feminist theologians contributed to a major symposium on "Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse". Political conflicts within the Church reached a new height in 1984, when the Catholic hierarchy denounced Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro for her support of abortion rights. Liberal Catholics criticized the apparent interference in secular politics, and a number of nuns and other religious published a petition of protest.
