Steve Shaw says: And what if the Church doesn't tell the police? Just let the abuse carry on until it does? Then not blame the Church? I'm sure the kids won't mind.

What if "The Church" doesn't tell the police? Churches can't talk. There are individuals in churches who are responsible for reporting crimes against children. They should be held to answer on criminal charges. Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City failed to report sex crimes by priests in his diocese. He was convicted of the offense, and resigned his position as bishop. That's how such offenses should be handled.

Since its first article on the subject in 1983, the National Catholic Reporter, a very Catholic publication also in Kansas City but not an organ of the Catholic Church, has published thousands of articles condemning specific Catholic bishops (particularly in the U.S. and Europe) for their well-described offenses in the Catholic sex abuse scandal. Many other Catholics have fought hard and constantly against this sexual misconduct since it was first discovered in the 1960s and discovered on a widespread scale in the 1980s. These good people do not deserve to be blamed for the sex abuse scandal.

You take a top-down view of the Catholic Church that sees all actions and power as existing only in the echelons of upper management. I think that view is invalid and insulting. The Catholic Church is my church, every bit as much as it belongs to the most pretentious cardinal. I don't deserve to be blamed for that cardinal and his watered-silk robes and his outrageous insensitivity to the concerns of people in need. I have fought against him all my life, to keep my share of control over MY church.

Don't blame every Jew for the misdeeds of a few. If you do, you are an anti-Semite.

Don't blame every Catholic for the misdeeds of a few. If you do, you are an anti-Catholic bigot akin to the Know-Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan.

Place the blame where the blame belongs - on individuals who are responsible for specific acts of wrongdoing. You cannot resolve this scandal by using a wide brush that includes Catholics who are also opposing this scandal.

The same is true when you blame all Americans for the misdeeds of the Trump Administration.

-Joe Offer-