This protestant congregation is reacting in the way I always expected Catholics should have reacted when confronted with a 50 year global child sex abuse conspiracy. Or a 50 year nationwide conspiracy to steal and sell thousands of Spanish newborns. This congregation sounded on the verge of lynching their church leadership after they covered up a minister's arrest for solicitation of prostitution, and further plea deal in which he pled guilty to a lesser charge.
I imagine this is due to them not being cowed into subservience by 1800 years of patriarchal dogma. I applaud this congregation for standing up against their church leaders and their coverup, but I still have lots of questions for members of larger churches.
Why didn't you rise up as one and boo Cardinals and Bishops into hiding?
According to the stats I've seen, between 4% (Church numbers) and 10% (external estimates) of priests were directly involved in the abuse of children. Add to that the hierarchy that hid this from the world and enabled these priests by moving them to other parishes, and you've got quite the conspiracy on your hands. This adds up to quite a large proportion of the church either abusing kids, or having direct knowledge of child abuse and choosing to cover it up rather than go directly to the police.
If you have been, over the course of your lifetime, in the company of 50 priests, at least two of those priests was statistically a child molester, and several more were conspirators.
People have said that such abuse is "in line with society at large". As unlikely as I find that argument, it ignores two huge points:
-- If 4% of priests and 4% of society are child molesters, the difference is that no one. NO. ONE. is willing to conspire with the societal molesters rather than turn them in.
-- I don't know anyone who lives their lives according to the teachings of "Creepy guy who touches himself at the park"
Anyway, I'd love to hear opinions on this. I would directly ask people I know if we could candidly discuss their beliefs and how that affects their feelings about all this, but I'm pretty sure it would cost me friends and family.
