I agree. Only caveat I would add is that when something like this happens to you, you do remember well, even to details of clothes you were wearing and that kind of thing. But even with corroborating testimony, the question remains, why did you wait so long? That's not blaming the victim. That's asking an eminently reasonable question. A question that anyone would ask if one of his family members were accused of such a thing. Another question I would ask is why do you want money for the ordeal?
I'm just guessing here, but when the scandal first broke I had the sense that there would be people jumping on the bandwagon who might not have had a claim at all. A church perceived as rich is an inviting target, couple that with the fact that being the world's biggest, and for the most part, well thought of but seemingly secretive religious body, and you have yet another easy inroad.
If liberty means anything at all to us, it can't be that some one just levels an accusation at either an individual or an organization and that becomes a verity.
In fact, I would support legislation that punished a false accuser as seriously as the offender. Once someone accuses you of a crime like pederasty, even if you should go to trial and be acquitted, your reputation is toast, and no amount of money or even front page news retraction will change that.
But what grinds me more than anything is that no one even notices the real offense, the great blunder, which was to allow the priesthood to fill up with sexually perverted homosexuals who are allowed to fill the ranks of the Church probably all the way up to Cardinal, who conceal the sins of others because in so doing they are concealing their own.
You're right. But I think a lot of people did get that, and that's what made it so scandalous. All of that gets lost in the ugliness of the charges and battle to try to find out if the charges are true.
Let's face it, the first urge that presents itself to the pederast or the homosexual is not willed. Their first mistake is giving in to the first impulse. I'd bet that if they were stong enough to resist that, the appetite would begin to subside. Though I don't have full confidence that that would be so for the pederast because a very contorted psyche must be present to produce or stimulate that appetite. For the person who does try to resist or conquer such an appetite, it must be a tremendous cross.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to excuse such depravity at all, but I think one has to try to understand it. I think a person with homosexual inclinations, even if he's never given into the urge (it's hard for me to believe such a person exists, to be honest with you) should not be allowed to be a priest or a minister. I think you're playing with fire otherwise.
Homosexuality has become a kind of ideology, whose devotees seeks to remark the world in their own image. Of course they use the raw materials at hand. Just as pagans made it, meaning licentious sex, part of their religious ritual, so the modern ‘gay” makes it a civil rights matter and homosexuality becomes a kind of racial trait. If I had not know about the racial cult of Hitler, I would wonder how rational people can come up with such nonsense.
But we live in a world that Lewis Carrol would recognize.