“I am not a Catholic basher...”
No, of course not.
Please document which bishops you're talking about.
I know that Catholic Charities in Massachusetts had to shut down their adoption program because the government forced them to place children with homosexuals.
You're right. Pew Catholics are paying a very high price for the sins of the past. When the sex abuse scandal broke, the media covered it round the clock for months on end. Victim groups were formed and lawyers swooped down like vulchers. Under constant scrutiny, how did the Catholic Church respond? With this document, that establishes a plan of action to prevent anything like this from occuring again in the future.
Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People
Under the terms of this charter, it is now mandatory for anyone in the Catholic Church who comes in contact with children, to attend a series of workshops and have a police background check. This includes priests, religious, teachers, cleaning staff, service workers, and all volunteers. The experience has been painful but has produced very positive fruits.
The same cannot be said for the non-Catholic Churches.
The figures released to The Associated Press offer a glimpse into what has long been an extremely difficult phenomenon to pin down — the frequency of sex abuse in Protestant congregations.Religious groups and victims' supporters have been keenly interested in the figure ever since the Roman Catholic sex abuse crisis hit five years ago. The church has revealed that there have been 13,000 credible accusations against Catholic clerics since 1950.
Protestant numbers have been harder to come by and are sketchier because the denominations are less centralized than the Catholic church; indeed, many congregations are independent, which makes reporting even more difficult.
Report: Protestant Church Insurers Handle 260 Sex Abuse Cases a Year
Without a central figure, like the Catholic Church, it is very difficult for insurance companies to pin down the level of abuse in the 25,000+ denominations. As to numbers, here is acollection of news reports on (Protestant) ministers who have sexually abused children.
Sexual Abuse of Children by Protestant Ministers
And these reports do not include abuse by Jewish rabbis or Muslim imams. They do not include abuse by Public School Teachers ( Sex Abuse by Teachers Said Worse Than Catholic Church ), Camp Counselors, Aides ... and the list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, because of the media attention, everyone automatically associates "sex abuse" with Catholic priests. We've cleaned up our seminaries. What has your Church done about sex abuse? What have you done about it in the schools?