In recent years there seems to have been a growing attention to the injuries of history.  We've seen it definitely with the very dramatic turn in the narration of American history vis-a-vis native genocide and especially slavery and anti-black racism; we're seeing it with arguments about British colonialism (and English abuse of Ireland).  We see it in many places.

This is, I think, a good thing, and a sign of moral strength, though it hurts.  In fact I would argue it's part of the wrenching reconceptualization of our present through reconceiving our past (calling George Orwell), in ways that are more honest and inclusive.  The reconceptualization is itself consequent upon changes in demographics, in groups gaining power and voice that they never had.  Where once groups simply "exited" the public sphere, or chose not to engage much at all, now they gain voice.  And moral complaint, moral demand, is an invitation to future relationship, not renunciation of that relationship--so it should cheer people that these complaints are being raised now.  Anger is better by far than numbness, exhaustion, or despair.  

(Scholastic note: Tocqueville, as so often, was I think the first to notice this, and make theoretical hay out of it, in his observation that the French Revolution began when things were actually looking better for the French peasants than they had been for a long time.  The Revolution did not occur at an abyssal point of uttermost despair; indeed for the two decades preceding 1789, the conditions of life in France had been steadily improving, so that it seemed “the better the situation of the French became, the more unbearable they found it.”  From this Tocqueville distilled a general idea: “The evil that one endures patiently because it seems inevitable becomes unbearable the moment its elimination becomes conceivable.”  I don't think the importance of this insight has been fully appreciated for our contemporary world.)

It is a good thing, but again, it is hard, and most of us avoid doing it.  Apart from Germany--which has clearly led the way (though only after 1968)--Europe, continental Europe, is way behind the times on all this.  (So is Japan, and forget about China; but those are posts for another day.)

There are at least three entities in Europe that have really never, ever been held even to the slightest account for their behavior in the period 1933-1945. They are the nations of Sweden, of Switzerland, and the European Roman Catholic Church. I do not think we'll ever get a real accounting from Sweden or Switzerland, but the evidence is clear that those nations eagerly and extensively enriched themselves by the Nazis, and covered up their collaboration afterwards. So did the Roman Catholic Church. Maybe it still is. But recent evidence suggests that, at least in Rome, some real lustration is going to happen. This will be painful, I suspect, but I think it is a good thing. This article suggests that more will become known in coming years--and not only about the failures and crimes of the war years, but about the cover-up that came later. (The "Actes et Documents" mentioned in this article were volumes published between 1965 and 1981, and seem now designed to deceive.)

This is going to be an ongoing story.  It's going to be brutal.  It'll be akin to the sexual abuse crisis that has roiled the Roman Catholic communion over the past decade, but I think worse than that.

How the church survives it will depend, I think, very much on how it absorbs these lessons and what it does with them.  We'll see.