At a news conference in connection with the release of the report of the National Review Board --- the body that had been appointed by the U.S. Catholic bishops to examine the sexual-abuse scandal --- Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the Bishops' Conference, used the word "history" in an apparent attempt to assure the general public that the sexual-abuse crisis is now behind us.

"The terrible history recorded here today is history," Bishop Gregory insisted. (The New York Times reported that the bishop had "punched out his words.")

The sins committed by the predatory priests (there was no reference to episcopal malfeasance in Bishop Gregory's remarks) were relegated entirely to the past. It was as if those sins had been laid out before some mythical confessor and been duly absolved.

The "penance" imposed on the predatory priests had also been executed. "I assure you," Bishop Gregory pointed out, "that known offenders are not in ministry."

In accordance with the "zero-tolerance," or one-strike-and-you're-out, policy adopted by the bishops in Dallas almost two years ago, a priest was to be removed immediately from the priesthood if at least one substantiated allegation had been raised against him.

(We leave aside here persistent reports from various dioceses that a number of priests who have been accused of sexual abuse remain in active ministry, or at least on the diocesan payroll.)

Significantly, Bishop Gregory made no mention of the "penance" that the bishops themselves might be required to perform, particularly those who had covered up the crimes of sexual abuse, transferred the perpetrators from place to place, thereby exposing other children and young people to future abuse, intimidated the victims and their families by threatening counter-suits or arriving at confidential settlements that imposed permanent silence on the parties, stonewalled or lied in the discovery phase of litigation, or blamed everything on an "anti-Catholic" media or on reform-minded Catholics for "using" the crisis to push their own "agenda."

Contrary to the sometimes pugnacious assurances of certain lay and clerical defenders of the status quo, the National Review Board's report indicates that the incidence of sexual abuse by priests may not, in fact, be below the national norm.

The report acknowledges that "at least" four percent of priests over the past half-century have been involved sexually with children and young people. Some observers, with professional and pastoral expertise on the matter, believe that the actual percentage is higher. Indeed, in a recently released report by the Archdiocese of Boston, the self-admitted figure there is seven percent, not four percent.

The National Review Board itself has disclosed that, in the nationwide ordination class of 1970 alone, one in ten priests were eventually accused of abuse.

The reason why the Vatican, many U.S. bishops, and their few, vocal lay and clerical defenders refuse to admit that the problem is far greater than they had ever imagined is that such a situation could never be explained away as simply the result of "the smoke of Satan" having penetrated the church (reminiscent of Flip Wilson's 1970s comedic punch-line, "The Devil made me do it!").

There is, in fact, far more to this crisis than the serious moral lapses of individual priests, whether the figure is at four percent, seven percent, or even as high as ten percent. The National Review Board itself points, for example, to lax admissions standards in seminaries in past years. That is a structural problem, not a matter of personal moral weakness.

This crisis will never be resolved, however, so long as church authorities and others deny that celibacy has anything at all to do with it. A common tactic of those who refuse to address this issue in any serious and sustained fashion is to reduce their opponents' argument to absurdity (in pre-Vatican II seminary logic courses, this was known as the fallacy of "reductio ad absurdum.").

They falsely claim that those who urge that the celibacy factor be considered believe celibacy to be the cause of the scandal. No serious person has said anything of the sort.

Let it be clear: the discipline of obligatory celibacy for priests did not cause the crisis, but it is surely a major factor in its eruption and eventual resolution.

People concerned for the good of the church, its priesthood and the sacramental life that is so dependent on the priesthood are simply saying that no stone, including priestly celibacy, should be left unturned, no avenue of investigation left unexplored.

Assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, the sexual-abuse crisis is not yet "history."

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.