[defconw]

Hey Kiddo! The Church is a train wreck! Fellow Catholic here. They had the chance to come clean when this came up 18 years ago. It was covered up again. They made the laity (of which I was one) go get finger printed in order to work with kids. That pissed me off. The laity was not molesting kids.

Any way I know it's painful. But rip the band-aid off and move on! ((((((((blu))))))).

[JockoManning]

Thanks for your fitting, valid points.

[ichabod1]

Trouble is they lost half their property in the last fire sale, guess they had to cover up the rest to stay solvent. Another big round of judgments could send the entire titanic structure down.

[blu]

Thanks for the support. Please note: I am not objecting AT ALL to the discussion of abuse within the Church. I m objecting, however, to the holier-than-thou misstatements of the Catholic Church's beliefs.

A couple years ago, I volunteered to work our tiny parish's Halloween party. Since I hadn't volunteered in about 20 yrs. and the rules had changed, I had to do all kinds of wacky official stuff, and I'm pretty sure a background check was done (no prob-I’ve had about 4 of them, relating to work/school). I am totally fine with the Church sticking their nose into my business to make sure our kids aren't being cared for or helped by CSC criminals. Not a problem! I applaud it. (But then, I'm the kind of person who tells the ladies at the polling place that I'm really glad we have to show our ID to vote. Big respecter of most rules.)

As the Church began implementing all the new rules about what one had to do in order to be around the kids, none of us bitched about that. We all wondered, rather loudly, why the priests were not being investigated. I don't know about you, but my parish, due to prior experience, is very sensitive about priests who are less than honorable. We discovered, after our errant priest left us (holding the bag, no less!) that he had been sent to us, by our bishop, to hopefully shut us down. Seems the bishop knew of our priest's predilections (money, they assured us...only money-and we didn't believe the bishop) for looting parishes to the point of bankruptcy and then moving on. So, the bishop would send him someplace that the diocese wanted shut down. Our tiny church and school barely ever met our CSA quota, so we were dispensable.

Ha, poor bishop didn't know who he was tangling with! Our little church is still ruled by the families who built it in the 1890s. Oh, sure, those families let the bishop and priest think they're in control! The families are very vocal, and will go nose-to-nose with the priest if they think he's out of line.

[pbear8]

Def - Please get your facts straight. This latest report covers 70 years, almost nothing is recent. It has been out there, it includes deacons, choir directors, and other employees.

The problem is rarely a priest going after a small child, the huge problem is homo bishops and priests recruiting and molesting and compromising.

Much real clean up has been done, actual cases since the first report are very low, much lower than other faiths, much lower than teachers, much lower than coaches, much lower than bio fathers, much lower than step-fathers.

Have the facts, don't join the brain dead in fallacious charges. Keep the pressure on the homo bishops and get rid of them.