Jim Carroll says: The church was aware this was going on and did nothing and in many cases actively covered it up so they are all "offenders" in this respect

But that's not true, Jim. I know that from personal experience, and from discussions I've had with Irish-born priests and nuns.

When I was in the seminary in Milwaukee in 1967-68, we were subjected to rigorous psychological testing, and 9 of my classmates were removed because they were thought to be a bad risk. So, back in 1967, my diocese recognized that sexual abuse was a problem in the Catholic clergy, and they took serious steps to combat the problem. In the 1970s, the U.S. bishops built state-of-the-art residential centers for treatment of priests who had problems with addictions and sexual misconduct. Neither of these responses completely solved the problem, but they were honest, rigorous responses.

In the 1980s, I moved to the Sacramento diocese, at the time when that diocese was developing a system for responding to sexual abuse complaints that offered counseling and financial compensation with no questions asked, along with referral of offending priests to law enforcement for prosecution.

Dioceses all over the world have been trying all sorts of approaches to the sexual abuse problem since at least the 1960s. Yes, there were far too many bishops who buried their heads in the sand and denied and covered up this scandal, but the wrongdoers were NOT in the majority. Trouble is, the good efforts of people rarely get good news coverage.

So, yes, Jim, I think there needs to be a balanced, realistic, honest approach to this scandal that is targeted at the actual wrongdoers. I also think that positive efforts to prevent future abuse, are far more important than are efforts to recycle attacks on 50-yr-old crimes over and over again.

The physical and sexual abuse of children is still a serious problem in churches and in most facets of our society. Scapegoating past misconduct in churches serves to ignore the current problem which is still widespread throughout society.

-Joe Offer-