The Clergy Child Abuse Disaster.  Although I am a product of 12 years of Catholic school education...until I intentionally attended New York University, then a hotbed of Agnosticism and Atheism, I was totally surprised when this story began coming out.  I had neither heard of nor witnessed anything of the kind.  As a result, I was both saddened and enraged by not only the actions of priests but especially the irresponsibility of their superiors...the Bishops with whom I thought I had a good relationship.  Then came the "assignment" of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law to Rome, or rather an exile as I like to think of it. His departure was preceded by a solemn religious send-off at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Norwich, Ct, attended by over 50 Bishops from as far away as Washington, DC.  It rivaled the coronation of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages...and was scandalous so far as I was concerned.
I have already expressed myself on these matters in the Catholic Church section of this web site.  But now comes "the rest of the story": the Irish and European experiences, clearly involving the Vatican and even then-Cardinal Ratzinger in the decades of cover-up.  Not even Mario Puzo could have made this up.  One must go back to  earlier centuries, as documented by Paul Johnson in his book "A History of Christianity" (Simon and Schuster, 1976) to find anything comparable in Church History. 
What is needed now is not the bloviating found in multiple articles on Zenit: The World From Rome (www.zenit.org), or even the political "mistakes were made" comments of the Pope in his letter to the Irish Bishops.  What is needed now is a complete exposition and a personal apology from the Pope himself...who now as Pope must strive to be "infallible in matters of Faith and Morals"...of which this is one.  Only then would most of the Faithful be able to forgive, in accordance with today's Gospel about Jesus and the adultress.

GS