As we have described in our book, Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis, one of the fallacies surrounding much of the news coverage and, frankly, underlying much of the frustration with regard to the Church and the sexual abuse crisis is a misunderstanding of the structure of the Church.

Many people assume that the Church is simply a religious version of a multinational corporation. The Pope is something between a CEO and a king, and he can snap his fingers and make the entire People of God jump to his command. This misunderstanding underlies a fair amount of anti-Catholicism...

Pope Benedict XVI is again emphasizing penance and purification as a necessary response to the scandal of clergy sex abuse.

Time magazine has a lengthy article online called "The trial of Benedict XVI" that essentially makes two points: Pope Benedict has to apologize for the abuse scandal. A radical, laity-driven restructuring — from both left and right — of the Church is underfoot.

Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra and Goulburn defended the role of Pope Benedict XVI in the sex abuse crisis on Monday, the day after issuing an 4,000-word open letter, “Seeing the Faces, Hearing the Voices, A Pentecost Letter on Sexual Abuse of the Young in the Catholic Church.” In the letter he described the culture that led to the sexual abuse crisis in his country.

An American attorney is seeking to draw the Vatican into the legal tangle of the sex abuse scandal by arguing that bishops who mishandled abuse cases are actually employees of the pope.

In the wake of the Vatican's "confused" and often "angry and defensive" response to the latest clerical sex abuse scandals, an American consultant to the Vatican on social communications is calling for a restructuring of the Vatican's communications departments.

On Wednesday, May 19, Matthew Bunson and I participated in a live on-line chat with the newspaper's readers about the article published earlier in the day on "Pope Benedict VI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal."

Check out this interview in USA Today on Pope Benedict XVI's handling of clerical sex abuse. The interview is with OSV president and publisher Greg Erlandson and OSV's The Catholic Answer editor Matt Bunson. They've just co-authored a book called "Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal."

The Hartford Courant reports on the latest efforts to tie Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to a U.S. sex abuse case.

When it comes to stories related to the ongoing sexual abuse scandals, one of the strangest was filed a week ago on Politics Daily. Written by Annie Groer, it concerned a 67-year-old man who has been picketing the Vatican embassy to the United States for the past dozen years. John Wojnowski is usually seen with large banners that shout "Sociopaths Hide Pedophiles. Vatican Hides Pedophiles."