Cardinal Gerhard Müller on why abusive priests should be secularized.

"If abuse is so great...the only solution, and the only justice for the victim, is that the perpetrator must be dismissed from the clerical state,” he said. “If you are a priest, a good shepherd, you cannot ruin the sheep." - Cardinal Gerhard Müller

I was impressed by what Cardinal Müller said recently in an interview on EWTN.  I mention it today after a story broke revealing the late Fr. John Harvey, Founder of Courage, encouraged bishops to resist the zero tolerance policy on abuse and reinstate abusive priests after rehab.  

Amid this summer’s wave of sexual abuse scandals, the Catholic apostolate Courage lauded its founder, Father John Harvey, who died in 2010, for his work with priests who “experienced same sex attractions and were striving to live chaste celibate lives.”

Yet while Courage proclaimed Harvey a “prudent spiritual director” and “a keen student of moral theology and psychology,” a review of his writings and public speeches raises new questions about how his approach to homosexuality - his belief that one could, in fact, change his or her sexual orientation - seems to have influenced his approach to treating abusive priests, advocating, at times, for their rehabilitation and return to ministry. - Crux

I'm sure we will be hearing a lot more on this. 

There's no accounting for grace, to be sure, and a man can change - and this is what Fr. Harvey seemed to base his conclusions upon. It is what vocation directors in dioceses, seminaries, and religious orders believe as well.