The pattern in Canada, and I'll bet in many other jurisdictions, was the state asking religious institutions and organizations to step in and manage delicate family problems such as unplanned pregnancies and ungovernable children.

The church was discrete; family secrets could remain secret. And if there were no priests to confess the problem to in the first place, no nuns to operate nursing homes and orphanages, no brothers to run industrial schools, who would deal with the fallout of family melt-down? The police? The courts? The district school board? Surely you jest.

What's more, church institutions were available to the poor as well as to the rich. Okay, they often were nasty places (Magdalene Laundries, anyone?), but the poor don't need gentility; they need their problems solved. And all of this was done at lowest-bidder cost to the public purse -- a value much cherished by taxpayers the world over.

Of course, now the chickens are flocking home to roost. In Canada, the first big public scandal was the Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland, back in the early '80s, and now it seems the bad news just never stops.

What a world of misery grows from righteous penny-pinching!