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You're missing something here: none of these are excuses, and nobody says they are excuses.

Catholics in FR and elsewhere hold child abuse to be an abominable sin. Like any normal people, we know this by Natural Law; we are also taught this by our Church.

When there's a credible allegation against a priest, three things have to happen, and fast:

the victim needs to bring criminal charges against the abuser,
the bishop must cancel all the accused man's priestly assignments, and
the bishop must forbid him, in any case (assignment or no assignment) to function as a priest (this is what we call "the loss of priestly faculties.")
AND In addition, a person who commits such a sin and does not repent of it, is liable to eternal damnation.

Do you seriously think that any Catholic here would dispute these points?

When there's a credible allegation against a priest, three things have to happen, and fast: the victim needs to bring criminal charges against the abuser, the bishop must cancel all the accused man's priestly assignments, and the bishop must forbid him, in any case (assignment or no assignment) to function as a priest (this is what we call "the loss of priestly faculties.") AND In addition, a person who commits such a sin and does not repent of it, is liable to eternal damnation.

Hey there Mrs. Don-o. As a Protestant, I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment. It saddens me as a Christian that this seemingly obvious reaction hasn't always been the case. The Catholic Church does appear to be taking priestly abuse seriously now, which is a good thing.

On other threads about the abuse scandal, I've posted this thought:

No one can deny the general pattern: When informed of a priestly abuse case, the priest in question was moved to another parish within the diocese, without regard to whether they might have continuing access to children. The priests involved do not appear to have been otherwise disciplined by the Church in any way. This pattern appears to continue, even when the same priest is accused of abuse in more than one parish. I don’t recall any cases where the priests were transferred to another diocese, where they continued their pattern of abuse, but I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.

We’ve seen this often enough that, regardless of the specifics of any one case, we recognize the pattern.

It appears that the Vatican made the decision years ago to keep abuse from priests quiet and handle it “in house,” to not air their dirty laundry. I’m sure this decision was made with the best of intentions and the welfare of the Church in mind – “this is an internal problem, we’ll handle it internally, and not give the public a reason to distrust the Church.” They wanted to avoid death by papercut. I’m sure their concern was much less with “protect the pedophile” than with “protect the Church’s reputation.”

The question really isn’t who has the higher percentage - who cares? One pedophile or gay predator is too many.

The question is how are such people dealt with when their behavior is discovered?

In any (admittedly conservative Protestant) church I’ve ever attended, no practicing homosexual (or admitted adulterer or fornicator, for that matter) was allowed to have any position of authority or leadership within the church. They could attend church, but that was it. They couldn’t be a deacon or elder, help lead worship, couldn’t even teach a Sunday School class.

The typical response when a leader is found to be in some sort of inappropriate relationship, is that they are given the choice to immediately resign whatever position they may have, or be publicly removed from it. Either way, they are typically out of leadership in a matter of days, not weeks, months, or years.

I don't believe there was ever any concerted attempt by the Catholic Church to protect pedophiles. I believe their motive was to protect the Church. The problem is that in their zeal to protect the Church, they forgot to protect the innocent.