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You can be as snide as you like, but frankly, I'm tired of Catholics who assume that a Bishop aids and abets child molesters, or is a homosexual, just because someone decided to 'out' them, and claim it. Anyone with a beef can do that, lawsuit or no. What has happened to the idea of seeing some evidence of wrongdoing before painting someone with the broad brush? I'm sure someone will accuse me of 'drinking the kool-aid', too, but so be it.

I got disgusted with the reporting out of Boston because I happen to know Cardinal Law personally; have known the man for over 30 years. I also know that while he was Chancellor of the Diocese of Jackson MS, he handled one of these cases for the Bishop. The parents did not want to bring charges, so Law made sure that the man NEVER served in any priestly capacity again. Knowing that, then hearing what was coming out of Boston, it made me wonder just how much he was told, early on, of these cases. Was someone 'handling' it on orders from the previous Bishop? He did try to help these men, and he admitted he was too Pastoral to them, but that's because that's how he saw his role as Bishop. In many cases, his hands were tied from further actions because of the legal situation. Meanwhile, the press and some Catholics started piling on because they had no idea of what the legal machinations were like, and they didn't know of how some of these molesters were protected from being charged with crimes because they were 'connected' with the local Democrat machine in Boston.

In the case of the Boston Globe, they had villified Law from the minute he set foot in Boston, because he stood against everything they stood FOR, and they were positively gleeful that they finally had someone with which to rid themselves of him. There was vitriol on all sides, and it only helped to inflame an already bad situation for the adults who were having to deal with the horrible actions of a few sinful priests.

"You can be as snide as you like"

That's not snide. That's pointed, but gently humorous.

"I'm tired of Catholics who assume"

There's just no way to get you off that "assume" wagon, is there?

You know, some people actually know some things, without having to "assume" anything at all. You can't rebut a position by falsely calling it an assumption, no matter how many times you repeat yourself.

"What has happened to the idea of seeing some evidence of wrongdoing"

What has happened to the idea of only needing to do that once, instead of setting the clock back to zero and doing it all again, whenever somebody who missed it the last time wanders in?

If they were only a few. If only the talk of a lavender Mafia were an exaggeration. Even Father Greeley, the perfect example of a liberal, worldly priest, whose words dripped with uncharitable contempt for the powers that were in the archdiocese of Chicago, was visibly shocked when he heard about the numbers involved.