"He did admit to the enemas."

Diane, one other comment about letting your children stay overnight etc. with these priests. I live near Cleveland, and when these cases started coming out there were many parents interviewed who let their children go on trips, etc. with these priests. The parents were absolutely mortified and never dreamt a priest would harm their children.

I know that in my husband's family they considered it an "honor", "priviledge", and kind of a "status symbol" to have a priest show such an interest in your kid. They seriously wanted all their sons to become priests. It was the ultimate vocation.

Besides that, many of these cases happened 20-40 years ago. I don't think that people talked about such things as abuse then.

What about single mothers? They might have wanted their sons to have a fatherly influence and honest to God, if you can't trust a priest then who can you trust?

I am sure that all of these parents feel terrible, but I don't think it is fair to insinuate that they were bad. Let's put the blame on the pedophiles and everyone who shuffled these men around.>

Major Wooton, I don't have any stats, but I do know that roughly once every few weeks there is a story in my local paper about an adult preying sexually on young people, either under-age adolescents or children, and a fair number of those are associated with schools or other youth-related organizations (for instance, a political figure who took young criminals under his "protection"). This is in a metro area of roughly half a million people. Whereas, as far as I know--and I stress that, because we all know about the coverups--there has only been one discovered case of abuse by a Catholic priest or brother (a religious brother at a high school). And it was relatively mild stuff--apparently didn't go beyond fondling. Also, it became known that a brother at a local college had something in his past. That's it. And there's a case of a priest having an affair with a married woman who is now suing, on somewhat vague grounds, but that's hardly the same kind of thing.

So, on the basis of what I've seen locally, I'd say Diane has a point. As has been said so many times, it's the coverups and the enabling that have made this such a huge scandal. That, and the luridness of the discrepancy between the crimes and what the Church should be.

Hostility to Catholicism (among both the media and the general population) and greedy lawyers are probably a distant third and fourth to those last factors.>

Thanks, Maclin.

I wouldn't be surprised if Diane is right, y'understand. But if the reporters are going to pick up the story there has to be more substance. And then we readers can hold their feet to the fire if journalists soft-pedal misbehavior and crime in the public schools.>