"Child molesters did the molestation....."
And a church that has placed itself above the law (in fact has invented their own law as an alternative) harboured and protected them and allowed them to carry on with their abuse.
The Pope's epistle proved to the world that this mindset is very much in place in the Vatican, and that if the abuse carried out hadn't taken place on the scale that it did, this wouldn't have registered on their Richter Scale. The church, from top to bottom, were fully aware that these rapes and physical abuses (significant that these haven't really entered the equasion to any great degree) were taking place and their only action was to protect the abusers by moving them on to continue their 'little weaknesses' - even to the extent of forcing the victims to sign declarations of silence.
ALL the crimes committed by the church should be exposed in their entirity, punished fully and the influence that it once held should never be returned to it.
The disturbing backdrop to all this is that the Catholic church is fighting tooth-and-nail to retain access to the minds of Irish children through their schools. If not the minds - why not their bodies - it's happened before?
Jim Carroll