I totally agree that secrecy IS the problem. But let’s not kid ourselves: the secrecy is not just among clerics. Anyone who has ever worked inside the Church knows that lay people are part of the cover-up system as well.
At the bottom of this is a lingering sense that the Church should be above the civil law………it’s pervasive sense of being above it all: the sexual scandals, the tax evasion, the desire not to participate in the secular school system….they all flow from that sense of being beyond the law.

I think you paint with too broad a brush, Jim. Why is it wrong to want to be part of a parochial school system? Are Episcopalians who send their kids to Episcopal schools (which are typically quite good) somehow guilty of wanting to be above the law?
I think it’s normal for anyone to want to protect their church — and in the Catholic case, European anti-clericalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries saw priests and religious persecuted. So this doesn’t come out of nowhere. Nevertheless, when one’s zeal to defend one’s church goes into covering up crimes within it, obviously it has gone too far.
An interesting (to me) aside: Catholic friends of mine who have worked within the institutional church have typically not been surprised by the scandal. One told me that the Catholics who have shown the most outrage about it are the converts, who really were shocked that this kind of thing was going on. To be clear, it’s not that my friends had specific knowledge that they covered up; it was that when this stuff got revealed, their attitude was like, “Well, yeah, it’s horrible, but given the nature of the system, unsurprising.”
It’s been years since I had those conversations, so I don’t want to read too much into their remarks back then, which I may not be remembering with clarity. My sense, though, was that they were commenting on the self-protective nature of the institution, an ethic that, as you allude, has been internalized by many laypeople. Perhaps this too is a legacy of anti-Catholic discrimination in America, and a fear that to air dirty laundry in public is to confirm what the Church’s enemies believe, and to open the Church up to persecution. I believe that’s one reason why instances of sexual abuse within ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles has been suppressed by those communities.

This is a problem that runs through all sorts of organizations that have intimacy of any kind at their heart—the family being the most obvious example (and, not surprisingly, one of the biggest sources of child abuse of every kind).
I am concerned about the knee-jerk institutional defense shown by some of the Holy See’s higher-ups. Truly there is such a thing as anti-Catholic bias, which has been well documented; but the overwhelming majority of critiques I’ve seen aimed at the dioceses and the Vatican were, if anything, well tempered given the horror and scale of this crime.
All the same, I think it’s important to understand that it isn’t just Catholics or the Roman Catholic Church. That doesn’t lessen the egregious, overwhelming sins the church must repent of; it is a timely reminder, though, that we live in a world that, in its human realm, is corrupt to its very core.

At the bottom of this is a lingering sense that the Church should be above the civil law………
Heck, I’ll put forth the idea that part of the problem is the sense that the Catholic Church is God’s representative on Earth and that those who oppose the Church are Satan’s agents bent on the Church’s destruction.

John E – Agn Stoic
in my observation of many years, those who really believe that the Church is God’s representative on earth (not the language I would use) are the ones who are most saddened and disgusted by clerical sexual perversions.
Viceversa, I have observed that the scandals developed most strongly where a living Faith had been replaced by clericalism, i.e. by allegiance to the Church as a purely human institution.
So, heck, I don’t think you know what you are talking about.

Rod:
you paint with quite a broad brush also.There is not much point, to me, in focusing on the “clerical system of sexual secrecy” as if that was the root of the problem. On the contrary, clericalism is a consequence of the problem, which is the lack of a lived experience of Christianity, which in turn can never be made into a “system” but must be communicated from person to person. This is how Church reform has happened through history. Systemic reforms follow personal conversion, not the other way around. This why I don’t find all these discussions about the “system” especially helpful.

in my observation of many years, those who really believe that the Church is God’s representative on earth (not the language I would use) are the ones who are most saddened and disgusted by clerical sexual perversions.
Well, okay Carlo – what did these people do about it while it was happening?

I think Jim is right.
Certainly those who are not RCs fear that the church places itself above the law, hence the concern about Kennedy. We see it again now, when Catholic Bishops pronounce on abortion for instance. Those of us who may be against abortion personally, but believe that we have no right to decide for women generally, see the church as interfering in the realm of Caesar.
When you see the background to the Cardinal Law situation, and the place of the church in RC Countries in Sth America, and the situation as it was in Ireland, where far to much deference was shown to the clergy, then you can visualise how this happens. The “absolute Power corrupts absolutely” saying has more than an element of truth.
When I think back to my own childhood, and the way my family used to treat Bishops, almost as royalty, the way we never questioned what was said at mass, the reverence with which we treated even the real estate. I think it is no wonder that we were abused to one degree or another.
And that sense of entitlement still exists amongst the clergy, and not just the RC clergy. It is time we all questioned every word they say.

Carlo: On the contrary, clericalism is a consequence of the problem, which is the lack of a lived experience of Christianity, which in turn can never be made into a “system” but must be communicated from person to person.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. Of course turning Christianity into a system, and the Church into a Sacrament Factory, creates a space for this sort of problem. I acknowledge that. But it sounds as if you’re saying that one can’t expect meaningful reform on the sex abuse problem absent the conversion of the world. That’s wildly unrealistic. Do we really need the Boy Scouts (for example) to be populated with sincere, practicing Christians to move forward on significant reform to counter a culture of child abuse, if such a thing were shown to exist? Of course not.
It is to be hoped that bishops, priests, scoutmasters, principals, and all people in positions of authority in organizations that involve children would act to protect children out of a love for them and a hatred of injustice and cruelty. Humans being what they are, this is not likely to happen. If managers lack the humanity to do their duty in this way, then they should at least be made to fear that they will lose their jobs and suffer real personal loss if they fail.
I think the fact that the Church is a religious institution often prevents people from thinking clearly about these matters. Like whoever it was in a previous thread said, whatever the sins of The New York Times, if a manager there permitted sexual harrassment to take place in the workplace, he’d be sacked with no apologies. If the management of The New York Times takes its responsibilities so seriously, how much more should the management of any church, but especially the Roman Catholic Church, the institution that believes itself to be the sole wholly legitimate representative of Almighty God here on earth?

John E – Agn Stoic
there is obviously no general answer to that question. But you original post made a completely different claim: you argued that there was some connection between the scandals and belief in the divine constitution of the Church.

“Well, okay Carlo – what did these people do about it while it was happening?” – John E
This strikes me as a slightly disingenuous question. It’s like asking me what I was doing while Al-Qaeda were planning 9/11. Nothing, of course – except enjoying my first summer out of high school – because I didn’t know about it, but that doesn’t mean I am in some sense implicated in the destruction of the WTC. Or does it?

I agree with Jim and will expand a bit further: I think the problem is that Catholic priests, in the US and other countries, had a kind of de facto diplomatic immunity.
Catholic priests, uniquely among clergy, are representatives of, and under the jurisdiction of, a foreign state, the Holy See, with its own legal statutes, the Code of Canon Law.
This is why civil authorities often did not prosecute the crimes of priests, instead leaving justice to dioceses and the Vatican.
The Catholic Church fought hard for this diplomatic immunity. But when it was granted, and offenders turned over to the Church’s jurisdiction, it dropped the ball. It did not prevent offenders from re-offending. More, it enabled new offenses, by placing offenders in new communities while covering up their crimes.
It’s true that all institutions have members who commit crimes. But not all institutions seek “diplomatic immunity” for their representatives. And, when an institution IS granted jurisdiction over its members, it MUST enforce justice and it MUST ensure that offenders in the community do not reoffend. The Church did not do this, and this is the heart of the Scandal.

Rod:
why the conversion of the world? I was thinking more of people like you and me and my patron saint:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Borromeo
The press yould love a Catholic Archbishop taking on his own (homosexual) Jesuit confessor, being subsequently shot etc… We live in boring times in comparison.

Rick, if you’re going to expand, it’d be awesome if you knew what you are talking about.
The Holy See is not a sovereign state. Vatican City is a sovereign state.
Secular Catholic priests (as opposed to priests who take religious vows and becomes monks) are subject to their own diocese, NOT Vatican City. They have no diplomatic immunity. Bishops never fought hard for diplomatic immunity. Tons of cases against priests were not dropped by prosecutors across the country expecting these guys to get it at the docks of a Rota.
So would you mind terribly keeping your know-nothing bloviation to yourself and instead find another excuse for why your justice system still doesnt work to protect your young?

I don’t think we should overlook how widespread the impulse to avoid this issue is in society at large. Anyone who has ever had an experience with an abuser in a public school, or in a scout troop, or in a private family, know this. True, the particular collusion of tradition Catholic celibacy with the permissive society of the 60s made for a very bad breeding ground for this kind of thing. But Catholics aren’t the only ones who have engaged in the very human practice of avoidance when it comes to this awful subject.
A second point: it may be bad PR for the pope to suggest that many in the media want to play this scandal up for their own ideological ends, but it happens to be true. Witness the odious Andrew Sullivan, whose hysterical post for today actually speaks of Benedict’s “personal complicity in child rape”. Sullivan is known to have a problem keeping his moralizing impulses in check. His rhetoric tends toward the unhinged. But this is really beyond the pale. I haven’t the slightest doubt that Joseph Ratzinger is a better man, morally and spiritually, than Andrew Sullivan. It is hard to lower the defenses in the face of such a grossly unfair assault.

I would be interested to hear from more commenters with suggestions for what the Church should do about the latest allegations. So far I have heard “the Church should do nothing” and public defender’s suggestions regarding complete disclosure regading sex abuse by priests and all higher-ups efforts, however small, to cover it up. Public defender’s ideas sound about right. Doing nothing sounds wholly inadequate.

Franklin, if you’re going to respond, it would be nice if you were more informed yourself. A bit of courtesy would also become you.
Note from the Vatican’s own website:
The Holy See has Diplomatic Relations with 176 States.
The Holy See is a sovereign entity. It works hard to preserve this sovereignty, as evidenced by its exchange of ambassadors (nuncios) with 176 states, its signing of various concordats, its participation in various international conferences, etc. It has its own canon law, dealing especially with clergy who are under its jurisdiction. It has a long history of administering ecclesiastical courts for priests.
I do not claim that offending priests were ever immune from prosecution as a matter of US law. Nevertheless, this is how matters worked in practice, at least for some offenses, with I believe the encouragement and lobbying of the Church. As I said, the Church has a long history of trying to remove its priests from secular courts — often with very good reason, such as to prevent regimes hostile to the Church (Marxists, Nazis, etc) from attacking priests on trumped-up charges.
I think it undeniable that the Catholic Church has lobbied for jurisdiction over its priests — and then utterly failed to exercise that jurisdiction to prevent reoffenses.

Franklin Jennings,
Here is a little contribution to your continuing education.
From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Likewise, not all persons are to be judged by secular courts. The Church could not permit her clergy to be judged by laymen; it would be utterly unbecoming for persons of superior dignity to submit themselves to their inferiors for judgment. The clergy, therefore, were exempt from civil jurisdiction, and this ancient rule was sanctioned by custom and confirmed by written laws. On this point the Church has always taken a firm stand; concessions have been wrung from her only where greater evils were to be avoided.

Rod, I don’t want to quote your last paragraph as readers can glance at it. IIRC, you ran a post about a month ago of a priest at the Vatican accusing those in power of being in a Satanic cult? I vaguely recall it on some blog on Bnet, so forgive me if it was not you. This system of interlocking secrets and mutual assured blackmail seems to have certain resemblance to secret cults. I am not NOT saying that priest was on to anything. I am just commenting on the resemblance.

Pope Benedict would not be in so much of a quandary if he publicly repented of his actions and changed his ways, and then encouraged the other implicit bishops to publicly repent of theirs and change their ways. Then, he could depose bishops who refused to change due to disobedience and lack of repentance, rather than past sin.
There needs to be a zero-tolerance policy of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. They need to defrock EVERY ONE of those sick abusers as soon as they are convicted of the crime. They can repent, rehabilitate themselves, and change their ways as laypeople. Defrocking and deposing clergy does not show a lack of forgiveness, but rather it shows a great desire to protect the innocent and to hold clergy accountable. Someone cannot be forgiven for a crime denied.
If Pope Benedict deposed every last bishop who refused to change his ways, and defrocked every last priest involved in these disgusting rings of abuse, the Catholic church would be much better off. You can’t hide behind “priest shortage!” or “it makes the church look bad” rhetoric anymore.

A second point: it may be bad PR for the pope to suggest that many in the media want to play this scandal up for their own ideological ends, but it happens to be true. Witness the odious Andrew Sullivan, whose hysterical post for today actually speaks of Benedict’s “personal complicity in child rape”. Sullivan is known to have a problem keeping his moralizing impulses in check. His rhetoric tends toward the unhinged. But this is really beyond the pale. I haven’t the slightest doubt that Joseph Ratzinger is a better man, morally and spiritually, than Andrew Sullivan. It is hard to lower the defenses in the face of such a grossly unfair assault.
Just because some people are out to get the Catholic Church doesn’t mean they’re wrong. People who love the Catholic Church should be furious that Benedict is on the factually wrong side of a dispute with the Church’s most shrill accusers (yes, there are a lot of thoughtful critics, too, but I’m talking about the shrill ones).
And, alas, many priests and bishops were complicit with child rape. The problem isn’t the label. The problem is the behavior that justified the label. My only quibble with the use of criminal language is that it tempts the church’s defenders to then insist that we go through every allegation again testing to see if the State can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt using admissible evidence and without seeing what evidence the Church is hiding.
As I said in Dreher’s last thread on this point, the Church is well beyond the “prove it” point. Contesting responsibility now just makes the leadership look weaselly. It’s time for full and complete disclosure of all internal church documents and knowledge, repentance, and consequences.

To those who complain that the media and other “opponents” of the Church are trying to take her down, do you also ask the Church and its leadership why they keep helping in that effort? The first step in getting out of a hole is to stop digging.

Maybe another one?
http://jessicaarbour.blogspot.com/2010/03/vatican-documents-showing-coverup-of.html

According to PR Newswire, the documents will be on the website above, sometime after 2pm EST

John said:
“Heck, I’ll put forth the idea that part of the problem is the sense that the Catholic Church is God’s representative on Earth and that those who oppose the Church are Satan’s agents bent on the Church’s destruction.”
I honestly think that those people at the top of the hierarchy don’t believe this. But they DO believe that they have the obligation and the POWER to keep the people, the laity, believing this. I think they are operating under the premise that if the laity does not believe this about *them*, then the whole system will collapse.
Well, guess what. Somewhere between 1900 and 2000, the people got educated, independent, and secular. They stopped believing this about the Church. They stopped thinking that their salvation was dependent upon ordained clerics in the Church. Church teaching actually changed on this point. So NOW, when this whole scandal blows up, the people are no longer willing to stay quiet and demurely assent to the hierarchy’s judgements, excuses, or policies regarding itself.
Even though I personally think this is going to bring the Catholic Church to it’s knees,it’s a good think. It is a basic operational principal in the spiritual life that death is followed by RESURRECTION. That is what this whole Holy Week is about for Christians…a reminder that though we die, we will see Resurrection through Jesus who is the Life.

What not to say in a crisis
“From God comes the courage not to be intimidated by petty gossip.”
Benedict yesterday

Isn’t there an elaborate Catholic protocol for confession and contrition, with humility at its core? Seems to me that the church hierarchy, including the Pope, would do themselves a lot of good by making a visible show of contrition: Not wearing the fancy vestments, abstaining from the lavish rituals, fasting, hands-on (not delegated) work with the poor – generally behaving like monks and being seen to do so. It would be PR, of course, and meaningless PR if the church weren’t doing its utmost to make amends to the abuse victims. That, however, is work that necessarily would be private. Without some public atonement, this Pope and his church are not going to regain moral authority.

Jam wrote: “They need to defrock EVERY ONE of those sick abusers as soon as they are convicted of the crime.”
Guess what? I agree completely. Now let the courts get to work convicting every accused person (clergy, lay, male, female) of the crimes they’re accused of, especially when those crimes are against children.
Oh, wait. That’s right. The Church shouldn’t make use of the criminal justice system. The Church should just go about defrocking anybody who has ever been *accused* of abusing a child. The accused don’t need no stinkin’ trials! Just throw the bums out. And ditto for the bishops–if the New York Times says they maliciously and with criminal intent moved a person accused of abuse to a new diocese, then out they go.
Oh, but wait, again. Today is opposite day, so that means that *today* the real problem is that the Church insisted that all her priests and bishops have diplomatic immunity and refused to cooperate in any way with the criminal justice system. Ignore the fact that WI civil authorities refused to charge Fr. Murphy with any crimes, despite the fact that he was credibly accused by multiple victims who were apparently willing to testify in court. The civil authorities were too scared of the sovereign state of the Vatican to proceed against Father Murphy, of course.
So the problem is that the bishops didn’t cooperate with civil authorities. Except when they did. Then the problem is that the civil authorities were too intimidated to proceed against clergy members. Except when they weren’t. So the problem is that the victims were perfectly willing to testify in courts of law. Except when (as was often the case) they weren’t. So the problem was that bishops moved men they knew with the fullness of moral certainty had abused children and would continue doing so. Except when they didn’t know any such thing. So the problem is that the bishops ever moved any priest against whom even one allegation had been made whether or not the allegation was credible or the victim was willing to come forward. Clearly even that one allegation should have been enough for the bishop to hand the priest and all of his employment and other records over to civil authorities while simultaneously beginning proceedings for a full canonical trial to laicize the alleged offender, because this is what any person with normal common sense and the perspective of the first decade of the twenty-first century would do. Gosh, what kind of moral midgets must the Catholic bishops be, that they didn’t do that twenty or thirty years ago?
I’m done here for the present. Have a nice Holy Week, all.

public_defender:
OK, but precisely what is the “factual wrong side” re.the Pope personally? All I heard was the stuff in the NYTimes about the Murphy case (nothing there) and the speculation that he may have read a memo in the 1980 (although the guy being interviewed said he probably did not). I heard all the talk, about the “system,” that everybody was negligent, the atmosphere of secrecy blah blah, but at the end of the day it is not fair to attribute guilt by association.
I am a little disturbed by the step which you take happily for granted, that because “priests and bishops were complicit with child rape” (sure, in some places), then “the Church” is responsible. What do you mean by “the Church?”
The whole episcopate? The Vatican in its entirety? All the US bishops? All the German bishops? The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? EVERYBODY? Me? If you want to talk about “facts” talk about facts, not generalities, because generalities lead unavoidably to witch-hunts.

Not a day goes by without posting on the Catholic crisis, at what point does interest become fixation?
For an interesting take over at First Things: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/03/scoundrel-times
As for me, I’ve come here for a few years now but it is time to take a break. Same old same old…only so many ways you can skin a cat. Were actions morally evil? Absolutely. I am not a convert. To suggest that cradle Catholics would call this “unsurprising” is misleading. I have two young boys and cannot even think of what I would try and do should something so heinous happen.
Enjoy the debate. I think you can have at least another dozen postings on Benedict and the failings of the Church. This will never get boring and NEVER EVER generate an endless stream of similar comments from post to post. Brilliant!
Thank God for Orthodox where leaders are accountable and responsible to the laity – or so I’ve read more than a few times now.
God knows the Catholic church could use a few more modern saints. We definitely could be less legalistic (Cannons et al) and rely more on tradition and church fathers. That is a debate worth having.
We’ve been through the renaissance papacy, we’ll get through this. It will not be pretty, nor should it be. One can only hope for civility and perhaps objectivity – yes, that is praying for too much.
Peace and Grace,
-jp

Carlo,
All of the above. The Church as an institution is responsible. Priests who molested are responsible. Leaders who knew of the molestations but who did not remove priests are responsible. Leaders who tried to cover up were responsible. Leaders who hired lawyers to rape the victims again in depositions are responsible (as are those lawyers).
The “who me?” game just digs the Catholic Church in deeper.

Read this link for an account of the recent revelations that cuts against the NYT hysteria. Weigel goes 10% too far in my view, in defending the church, but he is about 90% closer to a fair assessment that the Andrew Sullivan’s of the world.
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/03/scoundrel-times
Of course, he’ll be denounced as a reactionary by the usual suspects, but doesn’t it bother any of you how the media continues to recycle events that happened 20-30 years ago – in very different circumstances – as if they are part of an ongoing pattern? Don’t any of you wonder why the NYT and Sullivan etc. aren’t as vigilant about rooting about child abuse in schools, government agencies, foster homes, scout troops etc. Child sexual abuse is a broad social problem, not a Catholic problem. Many, many teachers, principals, DAs, police, etc have failed to protect our children. Heck, Martha Coakley was complicit in covering up and exculpating an awful child rape case during her time as DA. The Globe and Times happily endorsed her election. Now, in fixating their criticism on the church, these people are promoting their political agenda. This also is a fact.
Who really threatens our children more. The average Catholic priest or bishop? Joseph Ratzinger? Or the culture of sexualized children in ads and movies, legalized prostitution and child trafficking, rampant sexual activity among young teens, an internet pornography titanic in scale, and so forth that are part and parcel of our permissive society? Who enables that society? Who stands against it?
The church deserves criticism when it fails, and in fixating on it its enemies pay it a backhanded compliment. It’s failures ARE more important that the failures of Hollywood, the EU, the Dept. of Education, or the Internet. But that does not mean that it fails more often, or that its failures are due to orthodoxy, discipline, and tradition. I am a parent of two young children, and I know many priests, some of whom teach my children in school, and have weekly contact with them at church. I know where the threats to my children come from, and it is not from these good men.

But you original post made a completely different claim: you argued that there was some connection between the scandals and belief in the divine constitution of the Church.
“Master, how do we know the true messengers from the false?”
“Look at the fruits. Do you gather figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, a bad tree produces bad fruits. So you can know them by their fruits.”
(free translation, from memory)

On this point, I suspect that you would get Catholics as diverse and opposed as Andrew Sullivan and Michael S. Rose, a conservative Catholic who chronicled how the system works to marginalize orthodox Catholic seminarians, to agree.
They might agree about one aspect of the problem. I doubt they would agree as to the nature of the “lance”.

“Gosh, what kind of moral midgets must the Catholic bishops be, that they didn’t do that twenty or thirty years ago?”
How long, O Lord, must we wait for your justice to be done?
http://www.catholicsexabuse.com/WHAT_THEY_KNEW_IN_1985
From that 2002 article:
“Among the insights in this document are clear statements that while help can be provided for abusive priests, there is “no hope” for a cure for some of them, that a bishop “should suspend immediately” a priest accused of sexual abuse when “the allegation has any possible merit or truth,” and that “In this sophisticated society a media policy of silence implies either necessary secrecy or cover-up.” It said, “clichés such as ‘no comment’ must be cast away.” [Note that the first two quotations are not from the report, but from an essay by one of its authors, Rev. Michael R. Peterson, written in December 1985 to accompany the report when he sent it to the bishops.]
In some ways this is a story of what might have been or, perhaps, what might have been avoided.
As the bishops prepare for their June meeting in Dallas at which they are expected to formulate their responses to the clergy sex abuse scandal, the names of two priests and an attorney, Fr. Michael Peterson, Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle and Ray Mouton, are likely to haunt them. These are the names of the men who attempted to warn the bishops in 1985, pleading with them to take firm actions on the sex abuse cases.”
And later in the article:
“The men also warned that television and newspaper reporters — NCR was cited by name — were already on to the story and that the American Bar Association and plaintiff lawyers were “conducting studies … about this new, developing area of law.”
“The potential exposure to the Catholic church … is very great,” the report added, recommending that clerics accused of abuse should not be permitted to function “in any priestly capacity.”
And later:
“In 1992, Doyle lamented the failure of the bishops to take action on the abuse crisis. “Nothing happened,” he told a group of abuse victims at a gathering in October outside of Chicago. “Why the inaction? Why the denial?”
Doyle responded to his own questions. “To acknowledge the problem in its fullness would open the whole [clerical] system to critique,” he said. “It would weaken the presumed power base and strength of the hierarchy.” That day he characterized the church as having a “closed-in, clerical culture” that attempts to maintain deep distinctions between clergy and laity. “We are somehow different, apart and above the laity,” he added, claiming that this separation had added to the crisis by keeping the clergy aloof from the consequences of their actions on victims and others.”
By my count, Ms. Manning, that is nearly 25 years since the report was issued (June 1985). The report advised the Bishops to do exactly what is being called for today…remove abusive priests from their positions upon the first credible accusation made.
25 years, Ms. Manning. How long is it going to take for Bishops (and some laity) to understand that we are not judging this Scandal by 2010 standards, but by the standards of 1985, and even earlier if you choose to go back to individual cases and the recommendations that came out of them.
Does the Catholic Church have Fonzarelli Syndrome?

I notice that over on Erin’s own blog, she is taking the Legion of Christ to task, and pointing out that it must be considered possible that Maciel’s crimes were known to and covered up by his high-ranking associates, who are still running the Legion. She rightly censures the culture of secrecy and deception that still rules the Legion, and refuses to accept criticism from Legion supporters who try to shame her for speaking up about this. Good for her!!
But the sad thing is that she doesn’t see how her own defense of the Pope and the rest of the priestly hierarchy looks so similar to the defense that she clearly sees as specious when applied to the Legion. My question for Erin, Gerard, Carlo, JP and others: is there anything Church leaders could do that would make you feel they were no longer authorities to be followed?
From testimony of Steven Geier, one of perhaps hundreds of deaf boys sexually abused by Lawrence Murphy, the priest Ratzinger declined to deprive of his “priestly dignity:”
“First thing in the morning,” Mr. Geier said, “we took communion, and as he passed out the communion wafers, I thought about how many boys did he touch with those hands and all of the germs, all of the filth of his hands.”
How dirty can the hands of these men get before they lose their authority in your eyes?
It’s going to get worse. If you followed Michael C’s links, for instance, you will see that more instances are surfacing of priestly rape being reported directly to the CDF when Ratzinger was in charge, and the future Pope apparently doing NOTHING. As a direct result of this inaction, more children were raped. If this is true, he has enabled multiple rapes and assaults. It goes way beyond ignorance. I will venture a prediction: more people will come forward with documentation of appeals sent to the CDF under Ratzinger, more proof that he knew and said nothing. I honestly would not have believed it possible that the Pope himself could have been so deeply involved in the cover-up. Silly me . . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/us/27wisconsinQA.html
The words of this victim need to be reviewed regularly. Especially this passage, which seems to be a common statement from victims of child abuse both in and out of the Church.
“Q. So when did you try to tell anyone what had happened to you?
A. I started in 1966, and I told three different priests in the Madison area.
I went home (from St. John’s) every weekend, went to church on Sunday; I was an altar boy, and I was 16. I talked to the priest there, and told him that Father Murphy had abused me. The priest told me to just forget about it. He didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to hear about it, and he said: “And you should forget about it, too. You’re wrong, and there’s no way it could be true.” I honestly thought they were going to try to help me, but they really didn’t.
I went to a different church after that. (The priest) kicked me out.
Several years later, I wanted to have a blessing of my marriage. I told the priest what had happened with Father Murphy, and the priest just said: “Forget about it. It didn’t happen. You’re wrong.” ”
Why do so many abuse victims wait years to make their story public? Because nobody believes them when they first reveal what is happening.
It didn’t happen. You were wrong. There’s no way it could be true.
Just allegations to try to destroy the Church.

It’s going to get worse. If you followed Michael C’s links, for instance, you will see that more instances are surfacing of priestly rape being reported directly to the CDF when Ratzinger was in charge, and the future Pope apparently doing NOTHING. As a direct result of this inaction, more children were raped.
Just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. There seems to be no end.
I was a Catholic from birth, not a convert like Rod Dreher. This filth is inside my own family. How exactly do you leave your family? I’m working on it, believe me. My allegiance to Jesus Christ has got to be more important than this alleged “family.”

A question comes to mind here, one that hopefully someone with a better grasp of US law might be able to answer.
Is it possible for the RICO statutes to be brought to bear in any of these cases?

My post on Abshp Doyle’s blog, which is probably not going to make it past the moderator.
“The Facts are Sir:
That sexual abuse by clergy has occurred in Canada, The USA, Mexico, Germany, Austria, The UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Italy France Croatia, Africa, The Netherlands, The Phillipines, the list goes on.
The Facts Sir, are that your brother Bishops hid the facts from public view, paid of victims and swore them to secrecy, transfered offending priests from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, where those priests could, and did, abuse again.
The facts are Sir, that your brother bishops did everything within their power to ensure that secular authorities did not find out.
The facts are Sir, that the RCC has tried to keep these cases out of court by firstly denigrating the victims by saying or implying that they are not telling the truth, and fighting tooth and nail to keep laws on the books that allow these priests to escape prosecution because of statute of limitations. The fact is Sir, that your diocese has been fighting just such a battle for years now.
And we are expected to believe that this has not been orchestrated? We are expected to believe that this was all the work of individual Bishops, or national organisations of Bishops?
Sir, how stupid do you think we are”

See this?
http://catholicanchor.org/wordpress/?p=601

Sorry Rick,
i thought we were discussing reality here in the US. You know, where kids and teens were abused and people got away with it?
if you wish to have a discussion about catholic legal theory, that’d be great. use something besides wikipedia articles and a 1911 encyclopedia though. I know those are easy to google, and to acquire actual knowledge of a subject requires them dusty backward old ‘books’.
but it’d be awesome if you put forth the effort anyway!

Michael C.:
since you asked, sorry, you truly are not very intelligent if you think that in order for Bishops to cover up pedophile priests there was need of a Vatican-orchestrated conspiracy! Do you have any idea how the Catholic Church operates?
And who the heck is this Archbp. Doyle, by the way?