One of the things nobody points out is that during the time the worst cases occurred, in the 1970s and 1880s, child molesting was punished in the secular world with virtually nothing but a few years of therapy. Even pedophiles who had murdered children were “treated” and released after 5 years or so, and of course went on to kill again.
And homosexual pursuit of adolescent boys by adult males (which was what most of the clerical cases were) was not punished at all and in fact people like Obama’s candidate for a schools administration post publicly expressed the opinion that it was just fine and even beneficial.
The Church should have held to its view of these things as sin and punished them firmly within its capacity to do so, which would have been immediate removal from the clerical state. But even then, the Church’s options for punishment are pretty limited and consist mainly in handing these people over to secular authorities - for what at the time would have been a trivial punishment, usually consisting of “therapy” at some lightly supervised residential place that was more like a resort. So we have to keep in mind that the secular world was not good on this issue, either, particularly when it involved homosexuals.
My standard answer to people who rail about the Church is that pedophilia is not a Catholic doctrine. It does, however, fall into that of homosexuality, which has to abuse children in order to create new homosexuals.
The Church has been infiltrated in order to bring it down from within. What is ridiculous though, is many of the people who attack the Church support such perversions as homosexuality and the lowering of the age of consent, as well as removing children from being under the care and responsibility of their parents.
That is just flat out not true. Are there instances where that did happen? Probably. But it was certainly not the norm.
“One of the things nobody points out is that during the time the worst cases occurred, in the 1970s and 1980s, child molesting was punished in the secular world with virtually nothing but a few years of therapy.”
Sentences served for homicides in the US averaged slightly more than 2 years in the late ‘90s.
The indulgence of criminals is not limited to the pedophiles. It is general and it is entrenched policy.