I'm an atheist, but I'm not a jerk, and I'm certainly not laughing. I've refrained from the "this is why I left the church" rhetoric because it's not why I left the church, per se.

I'm not viewing this as a Catholic problem so much as a being held responsible for your actions problem.

It is sad and pretty horrifying. Once the cleaning and airing out start, more follows, and in the end, it will cleanse so hopefully nothing like this can ever happen again. It's a hard time to be a Catholic, but I think it's always been a hard time to be a Catholic, I'm just sayin'.

Michele,

It IS a Catholic problem, though. Not because the Church is "evil" or anything like that, but because the Church has allowed itself to be blindsided by it's own good intentions.

Once upon a time, when the Church was a much bigger part of daily life than it is today, there was no lack of candidates for the priesthood. Things have changed.

Once upon a time, only the best of the best got to go out and minister to the faithful. There were lots and lots of brothers who spent thier whole lives at the abbey, praying and baking bread and what have you.

Things have changed, and people who once would not have been considered quite qualified to lead are now becoming priests without serious competition.

Add to that that the Church has always been willing to give ANY sinner the benefit of the doubt, much less a priest. Add to THAT that the Church really, truly beleives in the perfectability of man and the power of prayer.

You or might not think that a guy who gets off on touching little boys is going to change because he prays over it, or because his bishop prays over him, or because he does good works and is penitent. But these guys DO think that. They really honestly beleive it.

And once you look at it from that perspective, then moving priests around from parish to parish as if you expect them to CHANGE when given a fresh start makes a lot more sense. Even protecting them from the civil authorities, whom it seems will just not UNDERSTAND, makes sense.

From the point of view of the Church, touching little boys is no worse, no different, than touching grown women. The sin is primarily the breaking of the vow of celibacy. [side note: pedophile, pederast, heterosexual, homosexual, necrophiliac, it doesn't matter WHAT your kink is, if you keep your vow of celibacy. IF you keep your vow.]

If you can strengthen a man so that he does not break his vow again, then you will have a good priest, and THAT is what they have been tryign to do. They are not trying to protect these people from the consequences of thier acts, they are trying to SAVE them, as men and as priests.

From the outside, we can see the flaws in this approach, but the priestly heirarchy has been working this way for millenia, and they don't change thier ways easily.

This, of course, is the real root of thescandal, the church has a growing problem with pedophelia, and they haven't reacted quickly enough to suit the public, especially in America, where things seem to run on Internet time. The church is traditionally resistant to change (ALL churches are) and the populace is upset at the lack of change.

But to come back to the original point, it IS a Catholic problem, because the Catholic Church creates an environment of trust, and of support for your fellow man, that lends itself to being taken advantage of by evil.

A small quibble, Gary. I've had 23 years of Catholic schooling, and I don't recall hearing anything about the perfectibility of man. Redeemability, yes, but that took divine intervention; not perfectibility, though. That's a Marxist notion.

Otherwise, you're on point. I've known a lot of priests in my time, even an openly gay one, but every one was currently celibate, as far as anyone could tell. Anything else would have been intolerable.

Father Foley a pederast? Angels and ministers of grace preserve us.

I guess I was lucky about the priests I encountered. Father Hilsdorf, Father Meagher, Father Greene, good men, every one, and Jesuits, too. And the Franciscan, Father Juniper. Many others, all good men. The bad ones really are a tiny minority, but they get all the press.

Bill

I'll echo Bill's quibble. Even though I'm not catholic, I know that they do not believe in the perfectibility of humans. They believe humans are fundamentally flawed, but in the forgiveness and redemption of sins, and that a sinner can be led away from sin.

I otherwise find your comments quite perceptive, Gary.

Even though I am Catholic, I must admit the Catholic Church certainly asked for this one. They had plenty of opportunity to address this issue over the past forty years, but did not. I understand why, expediency. This does not absolve them of anything. They are still guilty as sin.

The Catholic Church has had trouble attracting priests for at least the past thirty years. They are still short of priests today. Losing the pederasts amongst them will make this shortage even more acute. But for some strange reason or another, I doubt they will miss this last group of priests at all.

This all brings me to a poignant question. If they can afford to lose these abusive priests now, why could they not afford to lose them before? We addressed this agonizing question in Bible study class in 1992 as St. John Neumann Church in Lilburn, GA. Nobody had an answer. Everybody agreed this would lead to a huge scandal forcing the church to finally address this issue. Now the Catholic Church is handling their new scandal on somebody else’s terms. I do not understand for the life of me why they waited until now do to something about their dirty little secret. They will certainly lose some, if not many of their assets; and they will spend years recovering from something they could have dealt with entirely on their own.