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I hope someone can point out something more hopeful than anything I’ve seen. Here’s all I’ve got:

First, the secular press (I wouldn’t know about the religious press) is steadfastly lying about what the problem in the Roman Catholoc Church is. I keep reading about the Roman Catholic “pedophillia” scandal. The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t have a pedophillia scandal, and never did. The Roman Catholic has a homosexual rape scandal.

In all the reports of priests hitting on their parishioners that I’ve seen, there was exactly one instance of a priest hitting on a pre-adolescent – one instance of pedophillia, in the entire United States. There was exactly one that involved a woman, and exactly one that was consensual (the same one, if I’m remembering this right). Until I saw reports of the recent investigation in Pennsylvania that priests had been assaulting girls as well as boys, I had only one instance of heterosexual abuse, and I still haven’t seen the details of that, so I don’t know what was involved. All the others were of homosexual priests rapping post-adolescent (though many times, still underage) males. This is, definitionally, not pedophillia.

The secular press is militantly determined to not mention the actual news, and is simply lying about what it’s reporting on.

When I’ve seen any report of anyone in the Roman Catholic Church trying to reform the organization, they have spoken of ending the “pedophillia” scandal. Generality: No problem is solved while the people who are supposed to be solving it, refuse to state what the problem is. This gives me very little hope that any reform effort is going to go anywhere.

Note: In my mind–others may disagree–the real problem with a homosexual priest rapping one of the boys in his congregation is not the “homosexual” part. I would not be so very much happier if heterosexual priests were rapping the girls in their congregations.

I think it’s generally accepted that rape is a horrible crime and perversion, but in this case, there is also an additional dimension of problem. The parishioners do not exist to serve the priest, the priest exists to serve the parishioners. The fundamental role of a priest is, in the archaic, to edify the parishioners. The fundamental role of a bishop is to see that the priests do so. For a priest to rape his parishioners is a fundamental betrayal of what it means to be a priest. For a bishop to cover for priests who rape their parishioners, and enable them, is a fundamental betrayal of what it means to be a bishop. These role are critical to the functioning of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, and they have been about as thoroughly corrupted as they possibly can be.

As best I can tell, the rapist conspiracy completely permeates the Roman Catholic Church in the western world. Essentially, every functionary in the organization knows about this, and is either a conspirator, or, with a few courageous exceptions, has been cowed into silence. The entire organization is thoroughly corrupted.

The Roman Catholic Church is a very authoritarian organization–the Pope is in charge. Yet a reform-minded Pope, Benedict, was not able to defeat the rapist conspiracy, and, ultimately, was not able to withstand it. Now, the Pope is one of the conspirators. Necessarily, the conspiracy is now much stronger than it was when the Pope opposed it–and it was already too powerful for a Pope to oppose.

Praying for a church is never a bad idea, but in this case the need seems to have extra force. We have to hope that God will save the Roman Catholic Church, because who else can? The, bluntly, depravity of the Roman Catholic Church has gone beyond what anyone else that I can see, could stop. I see no hope for the Roman Catholic church, coming from a temporal direction.

Although I am not Roman Catholic myself, I regard the corruption of such a large slice of Christendom with horror. I hope some of the posters on this thread can point out something important that I’m overlooking. What am I missing, here?

I realize this is awfully long. Apologies for taking up so much space.