Had dinner with a friend last night who raised an interesting point about this scandal---how much of the problem is due to the fact that the Catholic Church in America has been shaped largely by Irish Catholics. Then look at the problems in Ireland, and in Canada and Australia where the Irish Christian Brothers (as well as others) have found guilty of abuses.

Some of the comments in here about Anglican and Methodist clergy also being involved in Canada were news to me. Same for the Muslims in UK.

I don't want to get into a trite rant about Irish Catholicism, but I have not seen any discussion about this aspect of this whole scandal. I know not all the guilty clergy are Irish, I know that the Papal press scretary sounded as stupid if not more stupid as any American Bishop in his responses to the press, but most of the scandal does seem to revolve around the US and the most egregious cases seem to have come out of Ireland.

Needless to say my parents were born in Ireland, my relatives live there and several members of my family are members of religious orders.