One can find cases of sexual abuse of minors by public school teachers in every county of the US. But it is not perceived as an institutional problem of the schools. It is instead seen.as a lot of separate personal criminal conduct, even though there is a lot of it, and even though school administrators failed to detect it or prevent it. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the public is willing to forgive managers who were merely incompetent and unobservant (as in most schools) but is much more angry about managers (including overseers, literally episkopos = bishops) who deliberately took actions to protect the abusers. That is why Penn State is going down, and that is why the Catholuc Church is hurt so much by these cases.

The question that arises for many is, if a priest confessed such misconduct to his superiors, why did not the superior prescribe.penance that included public repentance and confession to those harmed, including their parents, and confession to the judicial system? How could any penance be complete without seeking to restore the dignity of the victims and assuring them that it was the abuser who violated standards of morality, not them? Child sexual abuse inevitably involves pressure on the child to not reveal the crime, and until that pressure is lifted by the confession to public authorities by the abuser, the original offense continues, day by day, and has never been repented of. The apparent lack of appreciation of these facts is what has implicated the Catholic Church in the abuse by individuals.

Don’t forget that the fastest growing religious affiliation in the USA is “No Religion” a possible outgrowth of the Catholic crisis, This is a cultural shift that is growing rapidly and threatens organized christianity. We are slowly becoming Europe

In this instance the cover-up crisis can be thought of as “opportunity lost.”

I also think part of the problem is the media’s belief that the only positive things worth observing are those that occur in urbanized, cosmopolitan states, especially up North and in California, while the only negative things worth observing are those that occur in rural, backwater states, especially down in the South. I have it on good authority that southern Catholics, for example, are building and filling an awful lot of schools and churches, but that growth doesn’t fit well into the media narrative.

But how could this be? No one has heard about any kind of sexual abuse scandal in our public schools. Sure, everyone knows there are sickos out there, but nothing systemic like we saw in the Catholic Church, right?

And yet…if what I read is true, then despite the evil that infiltrated the church, it would seem to stand as a haven of safety compared to what children are subject to in our public schools.

Obviously my point is not to cut an ounce of slack to anyone guilty of these horrendous crimes, or their coverup, in the church. For whatever reason this scandal came to light, it’s a good thing that it did.

But man is fallen and will continue to commit these evil acts in and outside of the church, and most likely in far greater numbers outside the church. When we pretend the Catholic Church is somehow unique or even a prime source of these crimes, we participate in a similar sort of coverup about what is happening in our public schools and elsewhere as did those Bishops who moved these pederast priests from post to post. The church becomes the scapegoat for the evil we do.

Again, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the information I’m recalling is accurate. If a graph showed the frequency of these abuses in our public schools vs. our government foster care system vs. the Catholic Church and so on, and the church came out as the safest place for children, what should we conclude? How does that impact the argument being made by Philip Jenkins (a man who has written a book I liked a great deal)?