Smooth

Just today there appeared two new stories of sexual abuse of minors by teachers, one male and one female (the female is married). The following statistics appeared on another blogsite: In a single year, 1998, the Dept of Justice listed 103,600 cases of sexual abuse in public schools. From 1950 to 2003, there were 10,667 reported cases of clergy sexual abuse. That's 10 times as much in one year as there were in 53 years in the Church. Yet nobody is passing laws singling out teachers for special exemption from ordinary laws. Only Catholics. It makes no more sense to demonize the entire Catholic hierarchy for the abuses committed by some than it would to condemn all teachers. Let the guilty, and only the guilty, be punished.

Nope. Merely proves the reality of original sin. By the way, I've always contended that married men who abuse their children are the most heinous of all. They are the first image of God for their children, not priests or ministers.

Pauli (and Simon above) both remember to recite the mantra: It's the anti-Catholic media's fault. Why do they keep picking on us? Wrong, Joel. I didn't (and don't) fault the media on this at all. Neither am I any sort of apologist for the U.S. Catholic hierarchy's attrocious handling of these cases. My point was that your claim that the congregational structure of Protestant churches prevents abuse and coverups doesn't hold water. What that kind of structure does prevent is the denomination becoming a fat target for plaintiffs lawyers. If a Protestant pastor does something unlawful or actionable, only the assets of his own local church are potentially at stake. Even if it's a mega-church, that's small potatoes for a plaintiffs lawyer. But consolidate hundreds of local churches into one big legal entity and you've got the potential makings of a trial lawyers retirement fund. That's what's going on with the Catholic Church. Whether abuse or coverups are prevalent within Protestant denominations is something I have no clue about. What I do know is that you'd hear about more of it if there were an entire sub-industry of lawyers dedicated to pursuing contingent fee lawsuits against those denominations. But the financial incentives simply aren't there to generate that kind of interest among plaintiff's lawyers. And few lawsuits means little basis for news coverage.