And yes, Bonnie, if everyone in Ireland knew that this abuse was happening and nobody did anything about it, then everybody has at least some share of responsibility - whether or not they remained Catholic. There is an aspect of community responsibility for injustice that exists within that community. In Ireland, all who committed the crimes were Irish Catholics. They had Irish Catholic parents, and they had Irish Catholic brothers and sisters - and almost all their victims were Irish Catholics, too. They weren't from Rome. They weren't from America. They were Irish.

No, maybe that's not what happened. Maybe the children were abused and nobody knew anything about it but the victims and the abusers and their superiors. But it's my understanding that the deplorable situations described in the Ryan report were known at the time they were happening - that the police and the government and the press knew about these crimes and did nothing. This does not absolve the Catholic Church - but it does seem to me that others had a share in the responsibility.

No, I have never said that any aspect of this scandal should be swept under the table. I do wonder how Irish people can transfer the blame to Rome or other places, when it's clear that those who committed the crimes were born and bred in Ireland. I suppose you think we American Catholics should pay for the Irish scandal, too, when we've already paid a couple billion for our own scandal.

Of course, crime is wrong - and we should all get on our white horses and spend our entire lives fighting crime. And if we don't join the anti-crime bandwagon and become part of the obsession, then I suppose the obsessives are right in whatever it is they want to accuse us of. And of course, if we step away from our obsession for a moment and look in a mirror, we might find that we ourselves have faults.

Then what?

-Joe Offer-