Joe, I congratulate you on your ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at once. I used to be able to. What finally did it for me was when I discovered that the leadership's ability to do so was allowing kids of my generation and those before and after me to be harmed. I discovered that there was real harm in the contradictions, particularly in the myth of clerical chastity.

As I enumerate the priests and religious with whom I've been acquainted, MOST either engaged in or failed to stop the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults. If I ignore that, I'm like someone who watched war-crimes and didn't speak out or just kept on in the military like a "good soldier."

Now, I firmly believe that folks who think like you profess to think are being dishonest if they don't move out into the alternative Catholic movements that are beginning to gain traction. That includes laity and clergy.

It's not a "victim-less" way of thinking. It absolutely does "enable" both the abusers and their bishop- and superior-enablers.