Ed, get this straight:

• There is no justification for the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. None.
  
• There are no excuses for the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. None.
  
• The victims were Catholic children, and Catholics are outraged that this has happened. What is happening now, is that people are trying to pick up the pieces, to come to a rational understanding why this happened, and to come up with solutions that will prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
  
• But for now, there are very few answers. Nobody understands child molestation, and nobody knows how to prevent it or to heal the damage it does.

Then you say this, Ed:

you are using a false analogy to put forward a straw and circular argument to jump to an unjustified conclusion....that a great number of people abuse children, therefore RC priests abusing children is not all that bad....The Vatican and RC spin doctors already tried that one...even putting forward the argument that many abused (excluding the ones who were abused by now deceased priests, of course) abused underaged teen aged boys....so it was not really that bad.

Where do you find this stuff, Ed? It doesn't make any sense at all. Who would dare to say that abusing children is "not all that bad." Now, there have been studies that have shown that sexual conduct with those past puberty is different from having sex with children who have not reached puberty. And yes, I do think that sexually molesting prepubescent children is a worse crime than molesting older children - but both are serious, criminal acts. Nobody is attempting to deny the criminality of any of these actions.

But Ed, you're talking with your anger, not with your head. I'm angry about this, too; but I know we have to calmly study the problem and come up with a rational, workable solution.

-Joe-