Ed, I'm sure that a number of the priests guilty of pedophilia, went through the same rigorous psychological screening I went through in the seminary. The screening helped sort out some really weird people, but it left behind a few who ended up as child molesters. Others were identified as child molesters and given extensive, state-of-the-art treatment. Both the screening and the treatment were thought to be sure-fire methods of eliminating the problem of child-molester priests, and both failed - at least to some extent. Still, I think it's at least somewhat reassuring that some Catholic authorites were trying to do something, way back in the 1960's.

During this discussion, I've begun to wonder another thing: the priest-molester scandal has raised the amount of compensation to about a million dollars per victim. In the past, victims in our Sacramento diocese were given $25,000 to $40,000 and offered counseling, and the offender priest where ordinarily suspended from the ministry and referred to the District Attorney for prosecution - and in our area, the system worked fairly well. Then the Diocese of Orange gave a million dollars per victim, and several of our already-compensated victims from Sacramento sued for more compensation and we ended up paying a million dollars for every complaint.
I certainly don't deny the seriousness of the offense, but no amount of money is adequate compensation and no amount of money can heal the harm done. In addition, the compensation is being paid for by parishioners, not by offenders. The compensation is being taken out of the funding for soup kitchens and youth programs and schools.

OK, so now we have a situation where parishes are supposed to report any suspected offense to law enforcement authorities - which I think is something that must be done. The trouble is, most offenses are going to coast a parish a million bucks. If I'm going to report something that's going to cost me a cool million, don't you think I'm going to want to at first assure myself that the report is true? So, we have created a situation where there's a heavy cost to a bystander for doing the right thing.

Catholics have been badly hammered for questioning the amount of compensation, so "the sky's the limit" has become the rule. I agree with the need for compensation and for punsihment of offenders, but what's a rational way to deal with all this?

As for anything good coming out of this scandal, I think it has mad a lot of Catholic laity, priests, and nuns think twice about trusting upper management.

-Joe-