Catholic priests and Bishops haven’t exactly been well known throughout history for having a high morality, despite the party line:
“If morals be inquired into, we shall find few or almost none whom the ancient canons would not have judged unworthy. If one was not a drunkard, he was a fornicator; if one was free from this vice, he was either a gambler or sportsman, or a loose liver in some respect. For there are lighter faults which, according to the ancient canons, exclude from the episcopal office. But the most absurd thing of all is, that even boys scarcely ten years of age are, by the permission of the Pope, made bishops. Such is the effrontery and stupidity to which they have arrived, that they have no dread even of that last and monstrous iniquity, which is altogether abhorrent even from natural feeling. Hence it appears what kind of elections these must have been, when such supine negligence existed... the general and approved practice is (and it is carried on as it were systematically), that drunkards, fornicators, gamblers, are everywhere promoted to this honour; nay, this is little: bishoprics are the rewards of adulterers and panders: for when they are given to hunters and hawkers, things may be considered at the best.” (John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Ch. 5)
Protestant pastors and hierarchs haven’t exactly been well known throughout history for having a high morality, despite the party line either, right?
What is unconscionable is that these priests took vows of celibacy and deliberately flaunted them, and the ones who knew about it turned a blind eye to it, leaving those men free to destroy yet more lives.
There is simply no integrity among those who take the high moral ground and have lifted up their eucharist with those same hands, as if they were holy, that molested boys and girls.