I think the problem in the Catholic Church is that the Christian god has two aspects, the god of love and the god of authority. You can delegate authority but you can't delegate love. This leads to problems in all Christian sects (and other theistic religions too). I think the Catholic Church historically has been an extremely authoritarian church and large areas of it lost touch with the god of love completely. Certainly he was not in a lot of evidence in my own English Catholic upbringing at least at my school which mirrored Don's and still causes damage to my life - although it's not so serious now as it was when I was younger.

Joe seems to have been lucky to have experienced a part of Catholicism that was inspired by the god of love (and for these purposes it doesn't matter whether that god has any objective existence or not and good luck to him and the good people around him. I agree that the Catholic Church is not just an oppressive organisation but it can be at the same as parts of it can be the opposite. Both are faces of the same organisation.

I think the abuse in the Catholic church is because of the unusual level of authority that it was able to abuse. Any authoritarian body will attract bullies and sadists. I wonder whether the celibacy rule attracts people who are trying to deny their own sexuality which could add an extra twist but I don't know. Certainly a few of my teachers use to get a kick out of hurting children but most of them were married laymen.

I think Joe sometines steps over the line in his attempts to put the other side though and fudges things. The abuse was wicked, it was solely the responsibility of the perpetrators and their protectors, not the victims and their families and the Catholic church as an organisation is liable for any abuse of the authority that organisation exercised.