Last week, in the wake of a grand jury report that concluded at least 300 priests had preyed on some 1,000 children across Pennsylvania since the 1940s, attorneys general in New York and New Jersey announced investigations into Catholic Church sexual abuse. Missouri, Nebraska, and Illinois have launched state-level probes as well—and more are likely to follow. New York went so far as to issue civil subpoenas in all eight of its dioceses—New Jersey has created a special criminal task force to look into seven—calling for the production of internal Church documents that relate to the handling of abuse cases. The dioceses, for their part, have pledged transparency in working with investigators.

The wave of official scrutiny comes on the heels of what can only be described as a disastrously scandal-ridden summer for the Catholic Church. In addition to the outrageous findings in Pennsylvania, Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, DC, was removed from the ministry and resigned from the College of Cardinals after being accused of sexually abusing a teenager, other minors, and adult seminarians. Pope Francis has yet to officially weigh in on the saga, but has been rocked by accusations from a rival archbishop who claimed the pontiff knew of McCarrick's behavior and went so far as to demand he resign from the papacy.

Even if the pope himself is unlikely to ever face any kind of criminal prosecution over what he did or did not know and when, it does seem as if we're in the midst an unprecedented moment. Francis will reportedly meet with embattled leaders of the US Catholic Church Thursday, and it's fairly clear what they'll be talking about: With these recently-formed investigations coming in a new era of awareness about the scope of sexual misconduct, America is virtually certain to learn a lot more in the weeks ahead about cover-ups, misdeeds, and the general workings of the Church hierarchy.

..."I think the next step—and I do think it's going to happen—is a federal investigation. Catholic institutions are not only religious, but they're massive receivers of federal, state, and local financial aid through charity and other organizations. And, more than anything else, they're a tax-exempt organization. If Scientology, which is tiny sect, (eventually loses) its tax-empt status because of criminality, then isn't a fair discussion to have that for the Catholic Church (too)? Can you imagine, say, if you found out that 300 United Airlines flight attendants were molesting children, what would happen to United Airlines? And we don't have 300—(we have even more) priests who have been removed for this behavior since the early 2000s. The only reason they haven't been held to the same standard that everyone else has been is the religious works in front of them."