Mthe GM says: Re the post under consideration: it went back some way in history, to a point where I think the Vatican held more sway than it does now. Even if wrong about this, I do not think the Vatican should remain silent about evident abuses within your Church. IMO the institution, and the Church itself, are deprived of cred if the Pope does not even express an opinion on abuses which bring the Body of the faith into widespread public disrepute. I appreciate that there is not the least reason why the Vatican should care for the opinion as to its image of an atheistic outsider like me: but my point seems to me a valid one nonetheless.

Mike, I think you have your timeline about the the increasing power of the Pope backwards. No Pope in the 20th century reigned long enough to amass the power needed to buck the Roman Curia and the local bishops - until John Paul II. And John Paul II was absolutely silent about the child molestation crisis, which is a shame and a scandal. It was Cardinal Ratzinger who finally instituted Vatican controls over priestly sexual abuse - and by that time, John Paul II was too ill to do much of anything.

So, although your timeline is backwards, your conclusion is absolutely correct. John Paul II had the power to do something, and he did nothing. And nobody can figure out why he failed to take action.

Sexual abuse by priests was widely reported in the American Catholic press as early as the 1970s, and there were strict screening processes in place when I was in the seminary in the 1960s. American bishops spent millions in the 1970s on treatment centers for abusive priests, but those treatments didn't work.

And then John Paul became Pope in 1978. By 2000, almost all the active bishops had been appointed by John Paul. And John Paul did nothing and said nothing to respond to the sex molestation - so the problem just kept getting worse and worse.

-Joe Offer-