The "crisis" may be this:

In the 1970's, many people left the Catholic church because of the restrictions on birth control, and many priests left because of celibacy issues. Liberals were disillusioned that canges were not taking place fast enough, and conservative thought changes were happening too fast.

A lot of the child molesting that has surfaced recently, took place in the 1970's. Partial causes could be that many sexual taboos were being questioned, and that many priests were living alone instead of in rectories with three priests.

Interestingly, Ratzinger/Benedict's 1970 piece echoed what a number of liberals were saying at the time. I understand he took a turn to the right when his classroom at Tübingen was invaded by the Red Army Faction, and he was rightly terrified.

Somebody wondered why Rome hasn't paid part of the cost of the child molestation settlements. In general, functions of the Catholic Church are self-supporting, and each diocese is a separate corporation. The "local ordinary" (bishop of the diocese) is more-or-less independent - although he is sometimes overruled by Rome. Rome takes care of its own financial affairs, but it dependent on the dioceses for some support.

And, to a great extent, Rome considered this to be "an American problem," and church officials in Rome had no understanding of the problem whatsoever (and very little involvement).

Ed T, I think most of your conjectures about the attitude of parishioners are correct. For the most part, Catholic lay people have a very unrealistic view of the lives of priests. I can't agree with much of what you say about the thinking of "the church" on the matter of sexuality. Homosexual sex and sex with children is certainly not considered "less sinful" than sex with a woman. However, in many dioceses there is a strong homosexual culture among a certain small (but significant) faction of priests - in certain circles of priests, you'd think you were in the Castro District of San Francisco. Conduct is overtly sexual and flirtatious. "Straight" priests feel very uncomfortable in such circles, and can often seek friendship with parishioners instead of with classmates if this sexual culture is too strong. I would guess from the overtly sexual attitude of priests in these factions, that celibacy is not important to them. As I said above, there was a time in my sophomore year of college when this sexual atmosphere was very strong, and it felt unhealthy to me until a number of people were removed by psychological screening. While I was in the seminary, I did not know of any students being sexually active. Some did go on dates with women, but I never heard of male-male dating. I never, ever heard talk of anybody even thinking about having sex with children, or professors having sex with high school or college seminary students.

I checked the list of Wisconsin priests who had been removed for child molestation, and I think I knew five or six of them. None of them was deeply in the "homoerotic faction" I spoke of above. Most were what I could consider to be "pretty normal" when they were in college with me. I knew those five or six guys pretty well, and I cannot imagine any one of them having sex with a child. Of course, I don't know that I can imagine anyone having sex with a child.

We had a few seminary professors who did their best to make sure that we got good, solid sex education - one science professor was particularly good at that, as was my main moral theology professor. Maybe they should have told us about child molestation, but it wasn't an issue in the 1960's.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese, where I grew up, has had a reasonably good record with regards to child molesting priests, as has the Sacramento Diocese where I live now. Some incidents, but almost all were reported to law enforcement authorities and dealt with. This link (click) will lead you ot a lengthy report on the problems of Milwaukee - it isn't a pretty picture, but it does appear that the archdiocese tried to deal with the problem and that there were relatively few offenders among the 600 priests of the archdiocese. Rembert Weakland, who was Archbishop of Milwaukee after I moved away, apparently fell in love with some guy in the 1970's, and then the guy blackmailed him for half a million dollars in the late 1990's - but it doesn't even appear that the archbishop and the man had a sexual relationship. As far as I know, there were no sex problems in the Milwaukee Archdiocesan seminary that I attended. However, I learned recently that a number of high school seminarians in a religious-order seminary outside Milwaukee were molested by professors - several professors were accused (click). I wonder how that sort of thing affected priests who had gone through that seminary at the time.

-Joe-