You've got a good point there.
But there IS another secular notion which was influential, that was/is the Therapy/Treatment model.
For decades after, it seems, WWII, there were influential people in the dioceses and in the religious orders who believed that what should have been called a crime and a sin, was actually just something of a psychological nature that needed compassionate treatment.
Plus there was a widespread conviction in therapeutic circles that criminal proceedings against offenders would re-traumatize the victims: that it was pointless and cruel to get victims under oath to testify against their abusers.
Therefore, all the victims needed was money (to pay for therapy) and all the priests needed was a transfer (to facilitate therapy) + a "second chance."
The Church's legitimate interest in a compassionate approach, + loyalty to brother priests, + avoiding "re-traumatizing" the victims, was twisted into this policy of clerical offenders being sent off for treatment, paralleling the alcoholic-priest model.
In other words, it wasn't all pure corruption, if I can use that paradoxical term. There was also wrongly-directed compassion involved.
When are these so-called "therapists" going to go on trial?
Sorry, but I can't agree. It's not a compassionate approach if evey word coming out of your mouth is a lie. The church had ZERO intentions of making sure the priests never did it again. They supoposedly threw some head shrinkers at them, personally I think they just had other priests tell them, "what they did was wrong in God's eyes and don't do it again". That is not a psychological therapy, that is trying to guilt someone into doing the right thing. They already knew it was wrong and chose to do it anyway. So the church then just sends them to prey on other children in a new parrish.
I believe that your list of reasons assumes the church itself was concerned about the victims. I contend that is patently false since they let sexual preditors loose on a new parrish and didnt' follow up on the priests AT ALL. Compassion for victims should include NOT allowing the horrible act to happen to another person.
In fact, I know of a priest in my home town diocese who, prior to our area, molested at least on prior parrish. He was was then sent to THREE other parrishes since the one in my area. A FOUR TIME repeat molester, adn the church just sent him off to another parrish to do it all over again.
Yes, that's true, but it's a bit deeper than that. The normalization of same-sex orientation, brought to fruition by the 1973 removal of that orientation from the diagnostic manual of disorders, meant that "treatment" and "therapy" was not even really treatment or therapy.
If one denies that same-sex attraction is disordered, then sending abusers off to "therapy" cannot possibly solve the problem.
Even if the APA had continued to consider SSA a disorder and therapists had continued to treat it, sending a priest off for therapy and thinking him "cured" would have been a problem because therapy for this particular disorder is very, very difficult. You are right that trusting in therapy, even if the 1973 "normalization" had not taken place, rather than dealing with it as sin and packing the offender off to hair shirt monastery incarceration, would have been misguided.
But the denial that SSA is a disorder is the root of the problem because it makes therapy not only impossible but actually, in the eyes of the gay activists, makes therapy itself an evil. If SSA is "normal" and not disordered, then to insist on therapy for a non-disorder is itself an injustice to the "normal" person. So the "therapy" to which these abusers were being sent was actually not even trying to solve the problem. That's why the "therapy" and reassignment approach of the 1970s and 1980s was so destructive.
So the deepest problem was then and remains now the belief on the part of too many priests and bishops, that SSA is not even a disorder but can be "healthy" and "holy" if the person suffering from SSA will only stay "chaste."
Today the Church still insists it is a disorder but far too many Catholic leaders have bought the lie that it is not a disorder. That's the real battleground. And we are approaching the point where to insist that it is a disorder will be criminalized as hateful and hate crime.
At the same time, however, I have to insist that casual heterosexual fornication, treating heterosexual intercourse as recreation, the widespread pornographic mindset (which has affected almost all of us to some degree) is disordered. It differs in degree from person to person, but it has made deep inroads into the culture. We are dealing with sexual disorder, both homo and hetero, on a massive scale. It is terribly destructive. Remaining chaste not merely externally but internally in this situation is the fundamental challenge, of which SSA disorderedness is a huge subset.