Turning to the crises in the Catholic Church: they come down to four deadly words: "Good doctrine, bad discipline."
Here's how it worked in practice:
Ordination of active homosexual males has always been forbidden in the Catholicism: as doctrine, this considered definitive and unchangeable (Link). But liberal doctrinal dissidents (like Hans Kung), weak bishops, subversive seminary rectors and admissions officers for years ignored or quietly sabotaged the practice of Catholic faith and morals.
The background? Try Michael Rose's book, "Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church" (Link)
The result? It's all over the papers.
The solution? Its also summarized in four words To restore Catholic discipline. Or even in three: Become more Catholic.
The bishops who transferred offenders around in the 1970s and 80s are now mostly retired or dead and gone, and during the Ratzinger years --- when Joseph Ratzinger was had of the Churchs doctrine office (CDF), or, as Benedict, Pope--- sexual abuse dropped dramatically. This chart from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (Link) shows how reported abuse in the U.S has plunged:
The overall statistics support George Weigels observation in Newsweek (Link) that today one of the safest places in the United States for children and young people is the Catholic Church.
Hitchens was older, so his mom’s death affected him more, just like my older but not my younger adopted son (his brother) was full of rage over their parent’s deaths.
As for the scandal: I lived in Boston when Law was there, and let his office do the work. We tried to get him to openly oppose the pushing of Euthanasia at Harvard and other medical schools, but we (myself and two professors) were ignored...he was too weak to go after Geohagan (the worst of the lot) because he was a popular left wing street priest, and if he tried to remove him, Law would have faced criticism...or maybe the gays in his office didn’t even bother to let him know about the problem.
All I know is that a priest taught my son and eighth graders in a Boston parochial school that masturbation was okay, and my son was shocked...