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The more I see, the more I'm convinced that this is just the tip of the iceberg in a homosexual scandal that will affect the Church from the diocesean level all the way to the highest levels in Rome. Unless the Church takes action now, I don't think it will ever be the same in America at least. The problem is, I'm not sure there are enough good men who are not at least implicated in covering it up to clean house

I think you nailed it. It looks like during the 60s and 70s the liberals took over much of the church creating an environment (squishy "tolerance", etc) where homosexuality and therefore pedohilia could flourish.

Since church is "where the boys are" the pedophiles then flocked to the church as a sanctuary that provided many potential victims.

The liberal ideology had robbed the church of an institutional ability to recognize evil and the moral courage to oppose it, and the rest is history.

I hope my Catholic friends will have the courage to leave a church that has abandoned them and demand leaders who are capable of moral leadership and are not afraid to take on media causes.

The focus on the liberalization process in the Church in the '60's and '70's is, I fear, misplaced. Many of these abuser priests were ordained well before Vatican II's wrecking crew went to work, which means their formative years in the Church (when perhaps many of them were abused as well) was in the '40s and 50s. The problem is now in the the open, and the liberalization of attitudes since Vatican II has perhaps accelerated the process of lavenderizing the clergy, but as a serious issue this goes back many decades, even hundreds of years. Yesterday someone quoted Luther as having referred to 'bishops satisfied with just the love of a woman anre worshipped as gods' -- implying there was a serious problem with homosexuality in the clergy even then. I don't know, I'm a modern historian, not a renaissance/reformation scholar.

If, as hinted in yesterday's New York Post, there is at least one American cardinal who will soon be outed as an active homosexual, this is only going to get worse.

I hope my Catholic friends will have the courage to leave a church that has abandoned them and demand leaders who are capable of moral leadership and are not afraid to take on media causes.

1) Faithful Catholics will not be leaving their Church.
2) The Church has not abandoned them. Many in the hierarchy have, but St. Augustine said that the floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops, so it is not a new problem.
3) How can Catholics, if they have taken your advice and left the Church, "demand leaders who are capable of moral leadership"?

I think you nailed it. It looks like during the 60s and 70s the liberals took over much of the church creating an environment (squishy "tolerance", etc) where homosexuality and therefore pedohilia could flourish.

How utterly ridiculous a statement.

Impossible to prove but I [brought up and educated as a Catholic] have always believed the church was founded and promoted by homosexuals...it has always glorified males and treated women with contempt, except when in their traditional roles as mothers, and even then women don't/didn't get much respect from the "fathers" of the church. Homosexuals are the only men who feel compelled to glorify and elevate men and who have nothing but contempt for women. This has been deeply embedded throughout church history and dogma from the beginning. You do the math.

I believe people who remain devoted to religion are child-like and addicted to fairy tales. People should think for themselves. If it should turn out, for the sake of argument, that there is no "supreme God-figure," then the Christian-Judeo ethic that all right thinking people abide by is the sole creation of man -- perhaps inspired by the belief in a supreme being but nevertheless developed and adopted by "mere" humans. Not believing in such a mythical God-figure does not make people bad. Just realistic.

Hawking said recently that he believes there is "something" [my quotes] -- some kind of intelligence -- behind the universe, [while not acknowledging that this entity would be a supreme being in the religion-based model]. I think that's the farthest he has ever come to making such a declaration.

But something does not equal a supreme being who created every nook and cranny of a world filled with misery, sickness, death, evil, and destruction. We mere humans should step up and take responsibility for what happens here on earth and maybe then those who find comfort in the words "it's God's will" will realize that some things are beyond our control [acts of nature, the weather, etc.] and some are not and that we all should strive to make the world a better place for everyone in this lifetime."

The Archdiocese of Boston turned former priest Paul J. Mahan loose on the public in the mid-1990s after he had been diagnosed as a ``sociopath'' and a ``threat to adolescent males,''

Please note the above-quote: this man is NOT a pedophile. He is a run-of-the-mill gay man who likes his fresh meat smooth and wrinkle-free. He is, to use the parlance of the gay community itself, a chickenhawk--one of the gay comuninity's own, just a little kinkier.

I hope my Catholic friends will have the courage to leave a church that has abandoned them and demand leaders who are capable of moral leadership and are not afraid to take on media causes.

Can't. Christ only established one Church.

Besides, corruption amongst the Apostles wasn't unknown during Jesus' time, if you know what I mean.