Q: The Vatican, at one point, suggested this was an American problem, yet, as you mentioned, there are problems in other countries. Do you think bishops in other countries are looking the other way?

A: I think it's a global problem, but there are many places where the issue is really the abuse of women and girls. It's a major problem in Africa, because a certain number of priests want to have sex with nuns because they're celibate and therefore assumed to be clean, to avoid prostitutes who might have AIDS. I know from being in India that there is also a problem of sexual harassment of nuns. The Vatican didn't want to deal with this at all. But it's a much broader issue. I think pedophilia is actually widespread globally as well, but it's simply that churches [abroad] have not dealt with it. What makes it an American issue is that we actually have organized to go to secular law, and that has forced the issue open. In many countries where the Church is more of a state church, that is difficult to do.

Q: Do you think the Vatican views the American situation with some suspicion -- that this is really a back-door effort by liberals to get change on the agenda? And will that prevent meaningful changes from taking place?

A: I think that that was the initial take on it. I don't think that's the take anymore. The pope, in any case, has been apprised that this is not a sufficient response. I think, initially, he was suspicious that this was a way of challenging celibacy, and he's not at all open to that. I think he's become convinced that there is a real problem of pedophilia that he had to deal with.

Q: Can the reforms being demanded by liberal Catholics lead to a discussion of changes that for now aren't on the table? For example, married priesthood and ordination of women?

A: I'm not sure that a married priesthood and the ordination of women ought to simply flow from pedophilia. I think that's a much broader issue. There is, you might say, a connection in the sense that people come to feel that the present socialization of priests into a celibate culture creates an immature group of people and, increasingly, a pool of people not sufficient in numbers, and so on. That creates more demand to broaden the people who are able to be ordained. That's the connection. Those issues need to be discussed in a much wider context and not simply as a response to pedophilia.

Q: Women's ordination has been brought up in relation to the scandals. Isn't this a doctrinal matter on which the Church can't change its teaching?

A: The Church can change its teaching, but essentially, you have a pope who doesn't want to listen to the arguments, scripturally and theologically, that have been quite well developed by theologians and scriptural scholars. A few years ago, when the Vatican put out a statement that this could not be changed, biblical theologians said that this is not responsible biblical interpretation. The arguments are out there very clearly, and the question is simply to have a pope who is willing to listen to them rather than a pope who's not willing to recognize that these arguments really don't hold water. Obviously, they don't hold water even historically -- the ordination of married men was the predominant Church practice for the first thousand years.

Q: It's reported that priests have wives in Latin America. There are, of course, married priests in the Eastern rite of the Catholic Church. How can the Church defend this double standard?

A: The demand for celibacy in the West was, I think, a mistake to begin with. It was an effort to put what was basically a monastic tradition onto the regular priesthood, and to force the regular priesthood not to marry. It never worked. Through the Middle Ages, the ordinary parish priests kept right on having wives and children, but they were juridically declared to be concubines and bastards, and it never changed. The Reformation, of course, just revolted against these laws, but they didn't really change from a celibate to a married priesthood, because that had never really changed. This effort to make the priesthood celibate has never worked. Even today in the United States, there's a whole underground world of priests who actually have wives and children, but they live in double worlds.

Q: Do you think that the celibate priesthood is scripturally sound?

A: No, because celibacy belongs to monasticism. It does not belong to the priesthood. It's not a part of the New Testament. The New Testament clearly envisions a married priesthood.

Q: What do the American bishops have to do when they meet in Dallas to convince the laity that there will be fundamental change?

A: I think that they have to say a word of self-critique. They have to stop trying to scapegoat homosexuals, and they have to clearly say, "We have not handled this appropriately."

Q: What is the likely effect on the priesthood? Do you think that fewer men will want to be ordained now?

A: It could be that fewer men will want to be ordained. The problem is having less and less healthy candidates. The whole celibate culture, I think, has created a situation where healthier men don't want to be a part of that. That's part of the atmosphere that has created this problem. It's not that homosexuals as a group have a tendency to pedophilia, but rather, if you create a certain culture that's designed to prevent people from really dealing with their own sexuality, it creates a kind of immature personality. There's a connection that's been analyzed a lot between a certain kind of celibate, clerical culture and the tendency to prevent men from mature self-development. I think there's a connection there, but not that somehow celibacy itself is a cause of pedophilia.

Q: Are you for celibacy in any form?

A: I think it's appropriate for monastic life; it's not appropriate for the priesthood.

Q: Finally, how might this affect the legacy of the pope?

A: I don't know that it would affect the legacy of the pope. It might affect the legacy of Cardinal Law in Boston.