Attack on Girl Scouts Shows Current Law Isn't Working" by Sr. Joan Chittister/NCROnline

http://ncronline.org/blogs/where-i-stand/attack-girl-scouts-shows-current-law-isnt-working
..."The pope wants a smaller, purer church, we're told. Apparently that's what they wanted after the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, as well. And they got it. They lost half of Europe. They are now losing large segments of South America. The Irish Church is listing. Only 5 percent of infants born in Europe are now baptized. And the United States, once the largest church-going country in the world, in the light of the sex abuse scandal, is teetering, as well.
From where I stand, it seems that law isn't working.
Maybe the Vatican needs to go back to the approach of the loving John XXIII or the patient Paul VI.
Maybe we ought to try the Gospel again, the one that understands people who lift their work animals out of a ditch on the sabbath, or get caught in adultery, or are shunned because of their leprosy, or decide that circumcision is only one culture's sign of commitment, not theirs, or are the wrong sex, as was the Woman at the Well, to preach the Word of God. Let's try again the one that doesn't use investigations or intimidation or silencing or excommunications for the sake of control rather than make compassion the mark of the church. As they have, for instance, with bishops caught between two different sets of law -- civil law and canon law -- in the sex abuse scandal.
The results cannot possibly be worse than the ones we're getting. But one thing's clear. I know my own problem now: I was a Girl Scout."