banjoman- I totally agree. The decent in the Catholic Church- as in the rest of society- vastly outnumber the vile. But the big problem we have to face- the Church and society as a whole- is why the decent are ALWAYS outweighed by the vile. The child abuse scandal could be taken as a parable of our society's whole approach to inequality. Sexual abuse is not the only destroyer of the human soul. Poverty- by which don't mean only lack of money, but in the wider sense of the denial of opportunity to develop- is the enemy. And it is profitable- the powerless can be deprived of resources and land (see Europe, America and China in Africa), culture (plundered for fashion - Callino Custur Me perhaps), self respect, and finally, when defenceless, of power over their own body cavities- to me there's not a great gulf between the Catholic (or in former times Church of England) minister abusing his charges, and the sex tourism of South East Asia.

So the whole scandal to me falls down to, how do the decent folks- Catholic, Baptist, C of E, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, whatever- combine without creating a new organisation with the power structures that created the abuse in the first place?