Well, Bonnie, my experience of the Catholic Church in Ireland was only one week, and I did find it quite oppressive. No doubt, if I were living in Ireland, many in the Catholic Church would consider me a "troublemaker" - that's what many think of me here. I think the next two years will show that the Catholic Church of Ireland was the location of the worst of the sexual and physical abuse - although it happened all over the world, and far too often.

I realize that it's hard for all of you to argue with me - and it's hard for people opposing child abuse and molestation to argue with almost any Catholic - because we agree with you. And Catholic priests, bishops, and nuns generally agree with you.

When trying to oppose people who basically agree with them, those who are really angry have to do things like disrupting Easter Sunday Mass, as Jim described. The ploy is to manipulate a normally-sympathetic group of people into responding negatively, so you can then "prove" how insensitive and callous the people are - so you then have cause to express outrage at them, just as Jim did.

The same ploy happened in my town when the priest-Congressman Robert Drinan spoke, as I described above. Drinan's presence and the sermon he preached had nothing to do with abortion, but the anti-abortion demonstrators heckled him and disrupted the Mass nonetheless, and then expressed outrage when "liberal" Catholics responded negatively.

There are some bishops still trying to cover their tracks and evade responsibility for coverups - we saw good evidence of their fancy footwork at Easter. But nobody's covering up child molesters and abusers in the Catholic Church any more - even in Ireland, coverups don't work; and even the stupidest bishop knows that by now.

There never has been any sympathy for child molesters and abusers in the Catholic Church. That sort of conduct has no rational connection to Catholic teaching. HOWEVER, the coverups took place because people didn't believe accusations, or because they were afraid that exposure of the crimes would weaken the power of the hierarchy that failed to control the criminal conduct.

And you're not going to like this, but I think it's true: there may have been a legitimate reason to fear that exposure of these crimes would cause hysteria and overreaction. The trouble is, the coverups have caused a far worse reaction. There's no question now that the problem should have been dealt with quickly and severely right at the start.

And I suppose this isn't a popular thing to say, either, but the fact of the matter is that many, many cases of sexual molestation in the U.S. were handled and compensated generously at the time they were reported. They may not have been handled according to somebody's specifications, but they were handled in good faith. And with the outrage in the first years of this millennium, most of those victims were compensated a second time.

It just doesn't make sense to support people who molest and abuse children. No person in his right mind would do such a thing. For the most part, we human beings want to do what's good and right. Unfortunately, it's hard for us to believe that other human beings also want to do what's good and right - so our natural tendency is to demonize those who are different from ourselves.

The Catholic Church made a horrible mess of this abuse and molestation scandal, and it still isn't doing a good job of handling it. But the Catholic Church isn't demonic, and most of the people who screwed up aren't demonic. They just screwed up, and now they will have to pay a huge price for their misdeeds.

But we all screw up. Remember that.

-Joe-