“But part of it is that no matter what, there are Catholics on this board who will immediately look to deflect the blame and criticism by pointing out either abuse in public schools, or by claiming Protestant's have a higher level of sexual assault by pastors.
“It is a common reaction to a failing in something you love, but in the end it is harmful to everyone.”
No, I don't think that's mainly the thing to which we're reacting.
There are people, filthy anti-Catholic bigots of the worst demonic sort who actually have the audacity to label themselves "Christians" (their father IS the Father of Lies, after all). They have often, especially in the past, tried to tie the priest abuse scandal to our theology and discipline. They will blame it on celibacy, and then they will tie it deeper to our “flawed,” “unbiblical” theology.
So, we point out that not only do these problems exist in other systems and organizations NOT RUN BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OR ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC TEACHING OR DISCIPLINE (and yes, I'm yelling that part), but that in some cases, the other organizations and systems actually have worse abuse problems, and at least at this point, nearly-infinitely worse problems of cover-ups.
That's why you will often see Catholics post a reply to a teacher-abuse or Protestant-abuse thread along the lines of, “If only they could marry.”
Do we have a problem? Yup. Was the problem even worse than it is now? Oh, yeah. Have we been working on it? You better believe it. Is it all fixed? No, and as long as we're all subject to the effects of the Fall, it won't be.
But we're not very interested in the lame-brain, idiotic, satanic musings of dark-hearted, spiritually-lost anti-Catholic bigots about the errors of our theology and discipline and that it is these errors that cause the priests to abuse children.
And our reaction is to remind others that these sorts of problems happen elsewhere, all without the benefit of Catholic belief or teaching or discipline or celibacy or anything!
sitetest
Again, I agree. It will take a generation or so to change the seminary culture in places (if not longer). It will take a rise in vocations to remove the temptation to over look things rather than take action.
Both take time, and probably a generation or more. For the vocations, I don’t know. It is hitting all churches and synods right now. Simply put the type of men we need to be pastors and priests are not, in this time, signing up for it. There are many reasons for that, but it is beyond the scope of this article.
Same with the rather dismal performance of teachers across the board.