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Sounds as if you’ve drunk the koolaid. That Catholic Church had no more “pedophilia” than any other organization at that time—in fact a good deal less. And, with very few exceptions, it wasn’t actually pedophilia, as the press pretended, but homosexuality with teenage or older victims. And the source was not in the Church, but in the so-called Sexual Revolution, which infected some members of the Church.

A few bishops did play along and cover it up. Most of them are now out. And most of the scandals that were broken were from the 1970s, the height of the “sexual revolution.”

A free Republic can only survive if a sufficient number of its citizens are morally mature and willing to restrain themselves, rather than be restrained by the law and the police. De Tocqueville makes that case extremely persuasively. The ONLY way that the Republic can survive is through morality, and the only really stable base for morality is religion.

Christianity (and Judaism in lesser numbers) is such a religion, since it teaches both morality AND free will. That’s why the Founders based their whole experiment on inalienable, God-given rights and freedoms. Islam or Hinduism would not work, for instance, because one is arbitrary and tyrannical and the other is caste-ridden.

But our Republic did very well as long as it was Christian. It will not survive if the values of the 60s countercultural revolution prevail.

I could just fire back that you've ‘drunk the Cath-o-holic kool aid.’ But I hope it's not about name calling, rather a market place of ideas. How much or where the pedophiles came from is immaterial ti the point I was making. Pedophilia and pederasty are recognized as sex between adult and boy or adult and girl. The age of a minor is determined by or social contract. So the priest were involved in pedophilia not homosexuality. I do not gather my information from the MSM. I read other sources and do as much research as time allows. I picked up the story from the cases in the early 80s out of Louisiana and followed through to B. Law being promoted to Vatican City. The Church has a higher moral standard? yes? The Church reacted like any other corporation more concerned with protecting its money and image. The Council of American Bishops made a lot of nonbinding promises. When the spotlight finally moved on they fell lockstep back in line with the Vatican and changed next to nothing (except more nonbinding promises rather than procedural changes).

"That’s why the Founders based their whole experiment on inalienable, God-given rights and freedoms."
Actually the founding fathers didn't mention God in the law of the land that started this experiment. They mentioned God-given rights in a Declaration dissolving a social contract. In the our social contract the founding fathers, deist, theist, Quakers, Atheist, et al. saw fit to leave the whole god/religion thing out of the document that is the law of the land. not by accident mind you, but rather with intent. You'll excuse me now as I have to dust off my copy of Madison's notes on the Const. Convention. Thanks for the lob. I look forward to the exchange of more ideas in the free market place of ideas provided here.
Any thoughts on the idea that many societies existed and prospered long before the advent of ‘J-C values? What could they have possible used as their core morals? Perhaps there is a evolving social contract that produces stable societies. Perhaps that social contract started with basic stable ideas like: we can't tolerate murder, we can't tolerate stealing . . . just perhaps.