Well, I'm sure some bishops were acting with the best of intentions, believing that they were doing the right thing. On the other hand, there were homosexual or sympathizing clerics who wanted to cover for their buddies. In fact, the priest here who helped the offender I mentioned flee the country was prosecuted as an accessory after the fact or for aiding and abetting the escape of a fugitive, can't remember which. He was retired early . . . BTW he was a flaming queen, they should have gotten rid of him a LONG time before. But in the climate of the 70s when homosexuality was beginning to be fashionable, that was exactly contrary to the Spirit of the Age. It's even more contrary to it now, but the Church has belatedly realized that you can't give in to that, even a little . . .
Dear AnAmericanMother,
"Well, I'm sure some bishops were acting with the best of intentions, believing that they were doing the right thing. On the other hand, there were homosexual or sympathizing clerics who wanted to cover for their buddies."
Yup. There were both types, and perhaps even a third.
A lot of smaller dioceses didn't run into the problem frequently. Even some larger dioceses weren't exactly swamped with molestors. The Archdiocese of Baltimore a few years ago published a list of all cases from the 1920s on up to the current day. There were around 80 or 90 cases, as I recall. Thus, even in this larger archdiocese, dealing with the molestors wasn't a frequent event.
I think a lot of the errors committed were made by bishops acting in good faith who just didn't have much experience with the problem, and many of them didn't do a very good job.
Yet, there are some bishops who appear to have perhaps been caught up the in the "lifestyle" themselves, and the culpability of these is likely far greater.
Finally, there WERE bishops who saw a lot of cases come through their chanceries (Cardinal Law comes to mind), and these men for whatever reason, continued to make the same errors over and over, and with great frequency.
These two latter groups deserved harsh punishment.
sitetest