"Your Honor, Why are you picking on me when there are thousands, yea, tens of thousands, doing the same and worse and you've not said a word about them!!”.
I think that's the point. Why focus on one religious group when abuse occurs everywhere?
IOW the only reason at this point to focus on the Catholic Church wrt "abuse" is to attempt to smear the Church as some kind of breeding ground for abuse.
The conditions that fostered the continued abuse by some priests have been corrected, or at the very least are in the process of being corrected. No one can reasonably deny that.
The rate of abuse in the Church at the height of the scandal was at least, no greater than the general population, if not less than the population.
Given these facts, there is no reason to continue to single out the Church for sins some of Her clergy committed. The only reason to do so, that would be reasonable, would be a concern that it's still going on. There is no evidence of that.
To return to your analogy, this would be akin to asking a judge to recuse himself when/if there is a hint of bais on his part. Those who continue to hammer the Church for sins in the past, with no evidence abuse continues today (at least none that is ignored/referred for treatment by some leftist Bishop) show this level of bias, and therefore should "recuse themselves" from such discussion/debate.
That is, if such people are intellectually honest.
Let’s see how this would work:
“Your Honor, Since everything I’ve been accused of is in the past, you must be biased or you wouldn’t keep bringing it up, particularly since I’m in this 12 step program.
So unless you can prove to me you lack bias you shouldn’t comment on my actions and to continue doing so is intellectually dishonest of you”.
“The rate of abuse in the Church at the height of the scandal was at least, no greater than the general population, if not less than the population.”
But the clergy ARE NOT the general population according to Catholic teaching. It is a vocation from God that indelibly changes the man so that once ordained the priest is always a priest, for life.
Furthermore he is a shepherd responsible to Christ for the sheep that ultimately belong to Christ. He is charged with their protection and feeding etc.
Given all that, you’re using the general population as a standard?...............ho boy.