There have always been many excellent catholic priests.

And there has always some (nobody knows how many) catholic clergy who have been sexually abusing children and others for centuries.

And abusing their power altogether. Such being the nature of power, especially when it masquerades behind the mask of "holiness".

Such abuse is/was the INEVITABLE outcome or product of the sex and body negative emotional-sexual script that (mis)-informs the mind that is at the root or base of the puritannical sex-paranoid mind-set that insists on compulsory celibacy.

What is merely repressed, rather than understood and transcended via the exercise of discriminative intelligence, always resurfaces in all sorts of odd and bizarre ways.

I have yet to meet anyone who attended a catholic school in the 50's, 60's,and 70's who did not know of some very bent catholic "brothers" and "sisters".

And the exercise of "priestly" power (priests as "icons" of Christ---and therefore inherently good and trustworthy) offers ample opportunities to act out the return of the repressed.

Meanwhile all priests should be subject to the full weight of the criminal law---just like everybody else.

And those thus convicted should be instantaneously excommunicated---no exceptions.

There was a recent catholic edict that those assisting the ordination of women as priests should be automatically excommunicated.

Which is the greater crime?

JayB. Do you have evidence that the perpetrators are homosexual, as the greatest majority of child abuse occurs in the home environment.

The perpetrators being either a family member, relative or persons known to the family.

>>The entire tenor of this article appears to be "don't try suing the church, they've got all the angles covered".<<

I agree, Pericles.

Fortunately, in true yin-yang style, there are at least four views on this thread, all coming from completely different angles, that very well argue how the Church is wrong.

The culpability of the Church lies in its refusal to recognise that forcing men into avowals of chastity just drives their sexual impulses away from open heterosexual relationships and into secretive channels that are easy to cover up via the complicit abuse of power. The real nature of most priests was widely known and publicly acknowledged as long ago as the time of Geoffrey Chaucer and Piers Plowman, but for centuries the Church has persistently closed its eyes and used its power and authority to bully and silence its victims.

Fortunately, the number of young men who are willing and able to be indoctrinated by the Church is dwindling, and in a few years the authorities will have to face the consequences of maintaining medieval attitudes in a modern society.

It can't come a day too soon.

Thank you Father Brennan for writing this article. It is refreshing to get the facts, and to hear the opinion on the legal aspects of this sad affair, from a person properly informed and qualified, in spite of the predictable reactions by people who either have been themselves hurt, or just need to use any occasion to air their anti-Catholic, anti-Christian or anti-religion hang-ups.

A simple examination of the numbers determines that abusers in the Catholic Church outnumber in all areas abusers in other religions. It is an undeniable fact that there is no identifiable entity on the planet with the proportion of sexually abusive pedarist priests than what is found in the Catholic Church. There is no wider spread set of pedarist priests than those found within the priesthood of the Catholic Church with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse in more than 90 countries with allegations of sexual abuses coming from more than 170 countries.

After my own 6 year experience in dealing with the Churchs "Healing" processes my advice is to look elsewhere - there is no compassion or healing available through such out of touch, insensitive and legalistic structures.