The Sexual Abuse Crisis Is a Law Crisis (ft. Michael Mazza)

First Things Podcast

First Things

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Michael J. Mazza joins R. R. Reno on The Editor's Desk to talk about his recent essay, “Where the Dallas Charter Went Wrong,” from the March 2026 issue of the magazine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The truth never goes out of style, and First Things relies on readers like you to keep promoting
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0:22.1	That's first things.com slash subscribe.
0:30.3	Hello, welcome to the editor's desk.
0:32.8	This is the podcast where we take a closer look at the essays and articles in the latest print issue of First Things magazine.
0:39.9	I'm Rusty Reno. I'm the editor of First Things Magazine. And I'm here with you today at the editor's desk.
0:49.9	Well, I'd like to welcome Michael Maza to the podcast. And we're going to talk today about his article in the March 26 issue, where the Dallas Charter went wrong.
1:03.4	So I guess probably for the listeners is, first of all, we have to say, what is the Dallas Charter?
1:12.9	Well, thank you again for having me.
1:23.7	I appreciate the invitation. The Dallas Charter is a document that the U.S. bishops wrote back in 2002.
1:31.8	And it is essentially a statement of purpose, a statement of commitment, that the horrible abuses that had occurred in the church that were the subject of, you know, those Boston Globe
1:38.1	articles that had come out earlier in 2002, those weren't going to happen again. They were
1:43.6	going to take all kinds of measures to make sure that that kind of thing going to happen again. They were going to take all kinds of measures to make
1:45.2	sure that that kind of thing didn't happen again. But that's... So that just this all concerns
1:52.1	sexual abuse, clergy, mostly boys and things like that. Correct. I remember those Globe articles. That was this just tremendous
2:04.4	sense of crisis in the church in 2002. And so there's this meeting, I guess it must have been
2:11.6	in Dallas. That's right. It was in June of 2002. And they have an annual meeting and every year annual meeting every year
2:23.9	they have they have a meeting really twice a year and in in June of that year their meeting was in
2:31.5	Dallas so it was named the Dallas. But what it led to then was
2:37.5	an actual piece of law called the essential norms. And people don't understand the distinction
	...

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