The authors said that “we cannot ensure that there is no significant bias affecting these estimates,” but also that “we cannot affirm that the estimates produced are far from the true values.”
They added that, “as a matter of principle, all statistics derived from a survey are subject to errors of many kinds, and that all reasoning about quality is done ‘on average’: even with the implementation of extremely efficient probability sampling, there is never a total guarantee, because there is always an error due to sampling and non-response, and at most, it can be said that the estimate is ‘(very) probably’ close to reality.”
The academy members’ critique prompted a backlash. Several members of the organization, founded in 2008, resigned, according to La Croix.
The French Catholic daily reported that among those tendering their resignations were Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French bishops’ conference, and Sister Véronique Margron, president of the Conference of Religious of France (CORREF), both of whom attended the CIASE report’s launch.
Pope Francis responded to the report the day after its publication, describing it as “a moment of shame.”
During an in-flight press conference on Dec. 6, 2021, the pope said that he hadn’t read the text, but would shortly be meeting French bishops and would ask them “to explain to me what is wrong.”
He also cautioned against “mixing time periods” when judging the Church’s response to abuse.
“When doing these studies we have to be careful in the interpretations that we do over long periods of time,” he commented.
“When you do it over such a long time, there is a risk of confusing the way you perceive the problem of a time period 70 years before.”
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“I just want to say this as a principle: A historical situation should be interpreted with the hermeneutics of the time, not ours.”
The pope reportedly told French bishops on Dec. 13 that he was willing to meet the report’s authors.
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