The Catholic Church does not "run" itself outside of the realm of theology, liturgy, education, helping the poor and dispensing the Sacraments. As this horrible problem of pederasty arose among a tiny percentage of Catholic priests, the fact that nobody really knew how to handle it effectively should not surprise anyone. Nobody else in our society knew how to deal with this phenomenon either. The generally accepted plan in the 1960's thru the early 1990's was to send the perpetrators to intensive psychotherapy for six months or more for rehabilitation, and follow up with counseling. Sometimes this plan worked, sometimes it did not.
My point was that nobody knew how to handle this stuff effectively; not the schools, not the medical profession, and not even law enforcement, who themselves were giving pedophiles the "swinging door" treatment, as they let them out of jail to offend over and over again. And society still doesn't know how to handle these people beyond sending them to prison and throwing away the key.
In other words, society has thrown its hands up in frustration and has given up trying to "cure" them. This may be a safer and more effective plan than was practiced previously, but the Catholic Church is not in the business of law enforcement, and it was not their function to develop some cutting edge solution to this huge societal problem.
Taking the "forgiveness" and "medical help" route, while granting large monetary settlements to the victims, cannot fairly be viewed as some massive "mafia-like" coverup tactic as some allege. Forgiveness is the Christian way, medical help through psychotherapy and rehabilitation was an act of Christian mercy, and granting huge sums of money to the victims was Christian charity. I'm still waiting for the Catholic bashers out there to explain to me why over 600 teachers in the state of Texas alone were convicted or punished for child sexual abuse from 1996 to 2002, and the national media have not even mentioned it. This scandal is much larger and broader than the Catholic Church's scandal, so what is the fixation on the Catholic Church's problems? Surely the secular media and non-Catholics out there are not suffering from heart break because Catholic children have been abused. There is another agenda.
BULL.
Becky