Through my tiny window of perspective, I see this:
First, I was raised in a blue-collar industrial city that was at least 2/3 Catholic (Erie, PA) and "culturally", so to speak, everybody was Catholic, even the Jews. For instance, if you wanted to know what neighborhood a person lived in, you'd say "What parish? Up there by Holy Family?"
We assumed our clergy were holy, and most of them were. In grade school the peak of human development was to be either a Marine or Maryknoller (world missionaries.)
I'm sure that if I ever heard a rumor that a priest was getting indecent with boys, at the outset I wouldn't have any idea what it meant, and then if I knew what it meant, I wouldn't have believed it.
Second, by the 70's the Catholic Church was developing "beyond" a God-fearing ethic into a highly "therapeutic" culture. Whereas before, any kind of wayward behavior would have been exclusively described as a "sin," by the 70's deviancies were coming to be understood as "sicknesses."
So if Fr. Kevin was a little too handy with the boys, the assumption was that he was under stress, he got that way when he was drinking, he needed to take a medical leave down to St. Luke's and learn how to manage alcoholism and burnout and his particular psychological kinks. After some counseling he could be brought back and be "mostly OK" and a better man.
So the two categories we thought about were "sin" and "sickness." People weren't thinking "CRIME."
In fact I remember an idealistic young nun (she was a RN and the daughter of a RN) telling me that these cases should NOT be prosecuted because it would just re-traumatize young victims by requiring them to participate in the courtroom and testify, maybe multiple times.
Best all around to just quietly help the priest make a second start. People maintained a relentlessly optimistic assumption that if you didn't blow things up needlessly in public, with patience the priest would right himself.
People generally thought this way. Victims didn't press charges, police wouldn't arrest, it wasn't even thought of that the whole thing could or should end up with jury trial, conviction, and jail. Judges didn't want to hear about it. Compassionate progressive Christian people knew to take a "healing" approach.
That's as much as I can venture to say.
Oddly, in a way it's not a matter of Catholic Erie being too Catholic. It's being not Catholic enough. Really traditional Catholicism would have been far more severe, far more realistic about the reality of evil, judgment, and hell for those who were not confronted and pressed hard to repent.
Secular justice might have provided just the "spiritual" impetus to make a man repent: swift, severe and certain.
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The problem is borne (a) of the regional Seminary that feeds the Archdiocese, and (b) of that Archdiocese that feels they have so much territory that they can move abusers around.