[Leaning Right]

The sex abuse rate among Catholic priests is the same as the rate of abusers in the general population.

That's a good point, and it helps to keep things in perspective.

But the Church needs to hold itself to a higher standard. People in Europe are drifting away from the Church, and the abuse scandal is certainly one of the reasons.

This is disastrous. As I mentioned in my post #17 above, the West needs the strong, unifying influence of the Church.

But I don't yet see the Church making all the moves it needs to cleanse itself.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

But the Church needs to hold itself to a higher standard.

That's straight out of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

Rule #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

Congratulations upon being a radical enemy of the Catholic Church. An unwitting, unaware, easily deceived one, but an enemy nonetheless.

[BlackElk]

Though there are and always have been sinners in high places and low within the Church, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. We have that on the very Highest Authority. If we can’t trust Him, who can we trust?

[Mad Dawg]

I think part of the difficulty is that psychiatric screening instruments aren’t all that effective. And I’m just guessing but I think the net capable of catching the predators would get a lot of innocents too. I don’t know how you solve it.

[dsutah]

Haven’t you seen the recent conversion of several members of the Anglican Communion in Britain and parts of the rest of the world? Many if not most of them joined because of problems in the churches they left! Didn’t you notice that a few years ago, in the US, that Pope Benedict V1 was visiting w/many of the abuse victims and apologizing for what was done to them? Yeah, he met with groups of them, personally apologizing to them, praying w/them!

From what I read, many of them were glad he did, and were touched by his gestures for them! Gosh it would be nice if some people noticed what has been done to correct these wrongs and made/still trying to make them right!

[Antoninus]

But I don't yet see the Church making all the moves it needs to cleanse itself.

You're not looking hard enough. The Church has been cleansing itself since the 1990s and the rate of these kinds of crimes has dropped precipitously since the peak in the 1980s. Whenever the media trots out this story, it almost always involves old news that's been rehashed a dozen times. That's how propaganda works.

This latest round started on Ash Wednesday. Coincidence? Think again. This is how the left operates. Remember, they put on the "V" Monologues on St. Valentine's day, too.