I guess I'd say that in most circumstances, it doesn't do any good to try to figure out whom to blame when something is wrong - and I guess maybe that's what I feel is wrong with all these threads that condemn the Catholic Church for this and that. All too often, the condemnation gets in the way of fixing the problem.

If something is wrong, what's needed is for good people to step in and fix the problem - and too often, the screaming and finger-pointing gets in the way of that. I am a big fan of the "tipping point" theory, based on the book by Malcolm Gladwell that was published in 2000.

Gladwell's theory is that most things move along by inertia, and they seem almost impossible to change. But if a single person or a small group push against the inertia, amazing things can happen. Things can be really bad, and most people - even really good people - accept that's the way things are, and find it impossible to change things. I'm sure that's what happened in the institutions in Ireland. I can't believe that most of the people who worked in those institutions were horrible people who intended to be cruel. I'm sure that many of them did individual acts of kindness in those institutions and that they never did anything that was intentionally cruel - but they accepted the situation as it was, and never dreamed they could do anything to change it. The forces of negativity are very strong, and it may well be that they prevail most of the time. But I'm also sure that in some of those institutions, there were people who pushed against the system, and a very few people can make a real difference in a situation like that. And when kindness and compassion become the rule rather than the exception, radical change happens.

But it appears clear that didn't happen very often in the Catholic institutions of Ireland, if it happened at all.

I think the tide is finally turning, and now the Catholic Church even has a Pope who thinks that doing things with a good heart is more important than following the rules.

The baggage from the past still remains, and there's no denying it. I can't fix it - nobody can fix it. Great harm was done by the Catholic Church, and that's a fact. There is a demand for apologies and reparations, and there is a need for that - but somehow I don't think it's fair if the process of reparations for the past destroys current Catholics who are trying to do what's right.

The current compensation for Catholic priest child molestation victims in the United States is a million dollars. But each million dollars spent compensating a molestation victim, is a million dollars that can't be spent feeding the homeless. And a million-dollar damage settlement doesn't heal the victim of child molestation. And the million dollars is paid by people who had nothing to do with the crime, since the criminals are dead or penniless. So, I don't know what's the answer to that.

As I see it, the arrogance of the Catholic hierarchy has finally been broken, although there's a bastard here and there who got through the cracks. But the Catholic Church as a whole is deeply humbled by the multiple scandals and coverups that took place in the twentieth century and for centuries before that.

So, now you have a humbled church that wants to do right. Where do we go from here?

-Joe-