In Europe, I don’t know the figures and they may not be available as they have been in the U.S. for many years now. But, hasn’t Richard noticed that the “worst offenders” have already been removed as the American side was years back? The question is and will continue to be: what do we do now? How do we help prevent that culture from returning? R.R. Reno is looking ahead and I, for one, appreciate it.

LADR assumes it is the entire Catholic Church responsible for this. He makes no finer distinctions. Benedictine sisters or Franciscans working that soup kitchen, good parish priests (yes, they do exist) quietly keeping their parishes running and administering sacraments and comfort to the afflicted – all lumped in the same boat. At best, they’re useful dupes.

It’s bootless, however, not to look more closely at how these things happened – at who is responsible. The Vatican is an easy and popular target. And to be sure, feckless curial officials like Cardinal Sodano (who did so much to enable Marciel Macial) don’t do much to dispel such impressions. But the truth is that the Vatican had at best a very marginal role in the sex scandals, and anyone who understands how it really works would know this. Curia offices are thinly staffed and rarely efficient; and they, like the Pope above, are almost entirely dependent on the information given them by bishops and their offices.

And it’s these closed circles of episcopal elites – who have perpetuated themselves in key national conferences throughout the West – who have overseen these crimes over the last four or five decades, just as they have the virtual collapse of their charges. Why have Catholics not demanded that more episcopal heads role? Why not more urgency for an overhaul of leadership?

Under Benedict XVI the quality level of appointments has gone up quite a lot, at least in the U.S. That helps. But it would also help if a sterner message was sent by the removal, directly or indirectly, of the worst offenders before their canonical retirement age.

The bottom line is, can the Church survive? A question which has been asked hundreds of times over 2000 years.

Who can know the future to ask such a question. All we have is a promise and a number of hints from history to surmise this: the Catholic Church will be still standing, still fulfilling its mission from Christ (however imperfectly), long after Western culture in its European form has dissolved into Muslim theocracy, long after the USA has passed into history, and, more personally to you, my friend and I, long after we have gone to our eternal destiny.