We haven't seen anything proactive from the Church either, Joe, just blather, flim-flam and flannel. If I had 800 bodies buried under my land, I'd be acting, making arrangements for the matter to be sorted out permanently.

Let's look at this right-wing now. If ever there was a case for accusing Rome of bowing before vested power and influence, this is it. It starts among the Cardinals - they are the self-selected candidates for the top job, and so what starts as a desire for perfection, becomes infighting between them. We then meet the next layer down, the Bishops. They would love to become Cardinals, but can more easily be destroyed by them, and so become sycophants. At the same time, they also hold the Parishes under a thumb of iron, lest by acting autonomously, they open the way to destruction. The result is an authoritarian heirarchy.

Alongside that, you often find a shadow fellowship of family. I find it really surprising to find how often the people who rise high in the Church come from families who are high in the secular world, to an utterly feudal degree. I thought it might have just been Belgium, but I'm now dealing with another European monarchy at top level and it's the same. The result is you have to nail both Church and State to get anything to change, they protect each other. Thus it is we see power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely, the perfect recipe for right-wing diktat.

There must be a limit to toleration, as liberality is abused in this way. Every time this kind of thing has happened - and it has been current for eighteen years now in my adult life - the liberal wing has allowed the right wing to hide behind it. You have turned the cheek the requisite seven times, you have told your brothers they are wrong, and still it continues. It must stop.

The Biblical foundation for the damnation of child abuse is the start of Matthew 18, but the Chapter goes on to cover all of this in great and specific detail. Taking the grace of forgiveness and using it for evil is exactly what it deals with, and is all part of the same sick spirit.