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An institution based on truth has been caught in lie after lie after lie. Its leaders are full of deceit. The American Church is morally bankrupt.

SOME of them are. Believe me, I knew about this stuff 13-14 years ago, long before it ever came out. Not all of the bishops are duplicitous. Some are actually very pious and orthodox (Cardinal George, Archbishop Doran, Archbishop Dolan, Archbishop Rigali, among others).

It's a long story, but it all started in the office of the papal nuncio. One advisor made a whole lot of bad decisions. Pope John Paul II took that bishop out of the office almost immediately after taking office, in 1979. All the bishops who seem to be involved were elevated either before or in the first 5 years of JPII's tenure, before he knew who he could trust. The more recent ones are cleaning up the mess.

BTW, the church is about GOd. If we start making decisions about God based on what we think about men, that changes the focus, doesn't it? The church's teaching hasn't changed. Scrippture hasn't changed. So, we clean house and go on. Now, if they'd kindly get Los Angeles out in the open....

Look, the Church is about God, but if you want to go with that, keep in mind that the Church is currently supported here on Earth by people. So yeah, it's about God, but because it's run by people, it's liable to screw things up. I'm not saying that we should think that all of the bishops and priests and cardinals and whatnot are pedophiles. The simple fact is that there are certain psychological qualities that pedophiles tend to posess that are similar to those that would attract a person to religious (and celibate) life. That doesn't mean that God is for this sort of thing. Celibacy wasn't even a part of the original intent (from what I gather.) The only reason that they can't get married now is that some pope in the Middle Ages (I can't remember which for the life of me) decided that the Church was losing too much land to the sons of these priests and bishops after they died, so they made celibacy a part of religious life. And celibacy is as unnatural to humans as pedophilia. So, what I'm trying to say (and getting so far away from) is that I trust in God, not so much the Church.