Recently I celebrated Sunday Mass for a group of American sisters in Rome, and afterward I was asked to expose the Blessed Sacrament for adoration. They told me that they each do two hours of adoration on Sundays in reparation and prayer in response to the clergy sexual-abuse crisis in the United States.

And they fast every Friday for the same intention.

It was about the first “good news” I have heard in relation to the sexual-abuse crisis. It's been an unpleasant story to cover. It's dispiriting enough to hear about priestly betrayal and sin, episcopal malfeasance and sin, chancery incompetence and sin. It's even worse to have to write about it.

Recently, I have devoted a lot of attention to the legal aspects of the proposed remedies agreed to in Dallas, and those issues are important. But to write about due process is a little like writing about labor law during a baseball strike. It is not the heart of the matter.

Sexual sins and crimes by priests, and the staggering ineptitude of bishops in handling the aftermath, is not a legal crisis, nor a liability crisis, nor a crisis of public confidence, nor even — as I have heard it described recently — a public health crisis.

It is a profoundly spiritual crisis.

The sisters, more than most priests and bishops, have the common sense to realize that.

Their response reminded of me what Cardinal J. Francis Stafford said last April during the cardinals' summit in Rome. Cardinal Stafford, who never speaks without prior theological reflection, said that the Church had “spiritual resources” to address the crisis. He mentioned penance, conversion, mercy and healing. Nobody paid much attention. Perhaps the sisters were listening.

The typical line one hears from chancery officials these days is that after this whole mess is dealt with, the safety of children will be better protected than ever before. Which is all well and good but is nevertheless a rather minimal standard for the Church. The local square-dancing club should keep the children safe — one hopes that the Church is aiming a little higher.

When the Boston Globe is on your tail and the arch-diocesan budget is being slashed, it is admittedly difficult to raise one's vision above the worldly matters that demand urgent attention. Yet if all we achieve are favorable editorials for our child-safety policies and healthy diocesan finances, we shall have failed.

We need a spiritual response commensurate to the sin committed. The sexual abuse of minors by priests is, on the scale of priestly sins, perhaps second only to desecration of the Blessed Sacrament or apostasy from the faith.

The victims of clergy sexual abuse have a right to something more than bureaucratic boilerplate that “steps are being taken” and “procedures are in place” to make sure “this never happens again.” The coroner's office says as much after investigating an amusement park accident.

The common good of the faithful demands that punishments be administered — in accord with Church law — and are publicly known. We all need to know that restitution is being made, penance is being done, and conversion is being sought.

There is something spiritually unsatisfying about hearing that a fallen priest has been removed from ministry and is now living with his spinster sister and teaching conflict resolution seminars at the local community college.

It would do a lot more good to know that he has been sent to a cloistered monastery where he is spending his days in prayer and penance.

His victims should know that while he has disappeared from their community, he has not left his past behind like an unscrupulous salesman moving on to the next town. They should know that he has a new assignment from his bishop: To spend several years offering penances and prayers for the ones whom he has hurt.

That would be a spiritual response that would serve the victims and the common good precisely because it is spiritual. It should not be something strange for the Church to do. There is a handful of lawyers and activists who seek profit in the spoils of sexual abuse, but they do a disservice to the victims who are not out for cash.

Victims have been spiritually violated and they are entitled to spiritual remedies. Aside from keeping the children safe, it might just make a saint out of the priest who has sinned grievously.

Father Raymond J. de Souza is the Register's Rome correspondent.