Saying that there is a cover up amongst the Bishops is just part of the cover up. When the boy is abused by his dad or step dad and the mother comes in and wipes the semen from his mouth that is part of the cover up. When the boy comes in to tell his parents that he was molested by the man next door and is slapped in his face and told to stop lying that is part of the cover up. By claiming there was a cover up and diverting all our attention to the Catholic Bishops (not even the pedophile priest who were not held to same degree of culpability in part because they, like the Bishops position on pedophilia years ago, are still be many perceived to be too sick to control themselves) we allow pedophiles who are not of the cloth to attack children in even greater obscurity. If the Bishops are responsible for a cover up in the Church who is responsible for the cover ups outside the Church? Ought we not to tell the police all we know about our brothers and fathers and uncles and sons? Yet, the question would be like that posed to the disciple when Christ asked if they wanted to leave too. "Lord, to whom shall we go?" (John 6:69). If we remember, it was the New York City Police Department that actually started to sell the drugs brought in by famed NYPD police officer Eddie Egan during this time in the seventies, so it would be a precarious assumption that even the police would be completely free of guile and corrupt motives in this matter. Further, the question of why the victims themselves did not turn to the police in such numbers is indicative of a certain social inhibition of some kind regarding this social failure. It should seem evident therefore that a crisis of morals does not have a legal remedy. The pervasiveness of the pedophile behavior which can be traced all the way up to State Supreme Court Justices and other high ranking members of society often make exposure of the crime difficult. It is only because there is a political assault on the Church that the Bishops are vulnerable. Yet, this cry of 'cover up' intimates that pedophilia is uniquely localized in Catholic culture and the Church. Had we claimed it to be an Irish characteristic, or a German or (as the Pope did) an American phenomenon there would only be justifiable retaliation claiming the same occurs in one's own back yard. For the crime of pedophilia to occur all one needs is the pedophile, the child and an opportunity. The courts want to claim that the Bishops had a greater desire to protect the Church than seek justice. Yet, at the end of the day it certainly seems if in fact that were their motive (which I do not believe to be the case) it was well justified. These crimes have a statute of limitations and in certain cases were determined by American courts to be a misdemeanor. Yet these same crimes, whose stature of limitations were inexplicably rescinded were used to bilk the Church out of BILLIONS of dollars of charitable donations (the pedophile priest and Bishops weren't selling their personal villas in Italy and yachts to pay these enormous punitive damages, they never had that kind of money)and to have the Pope himself stand trail for the acts of pedophiles serving as priest,(presumably he could not be held accountable for the parishioners convicted of pedophilia). All of which only lends incentive to under report any future cases of pedophilia by any institution. The reality of pedophilia is more akin to drug use, it is illegal but so prevalent that in a way the society itself is responsible for a 'cover up'. No one is turning in a friend for smoking pot or snorting cocaine. No one is turning in a co-worker to the police because they frequent brothels. Yet these are crimes and if we are to say that they are not as morally heinous or reprehensible as pedophilia we would only be speaking from our disposition as members of one culture rather than that of the other and with an ever increasing psychologically immature sentiment that children are innocent, disproved by the pedophile scandal itself. We find proof that a child's life is quite perilous and complicated and proof that many were only idealizing not only the childhood of the victims but their own as well. Many have idealized the Church for their own comfort, to which the actual history of the Church itself would quickly strip from the lovers of chorals and ceremony. All that time that many were maintaining these selfish notions the children were being raped, since most of the cases took place in the past, there was never a time when this wasn't happening for millions today. However, if it wasn't for the pedophile sex scandal in the Church I don't believe we would have had a national conversation on pedophilia at all, even as it stands we still don't, the conversation inevitably digresses into the 'evils' of Catholicism, the Inquisition and so forth. Currently, pedophilia is the fly in the soup but the 'soup' is actually a puree of flies. Today pedophilia is the only vice. When the State wanted to normalize homosexuality they legalized sodomy, when the State wanted abortions on demand, they legalized abortion, when the State wanted pornography on demand, they legalized pornography to the point where it is thousands of times larger than the industry it was in days it saturated the theaters and shops of old "sleazy' Times Square NYC. Now that people can watch the 'filth' in the privacy of their own homes that somehow made it more acceptable, as one man described it, mainstream porn. Yet it is the same morally degrading content it was in Times Square. Certainly main stream porn is nothing but a sewer from which the people imbibe? There is not even a remote moral justification associated with these legal pronouncements. They are simply perceived by millions as a matter of civil liberties. Today, the moral tides ebb the sand from under our feet yet again as it did in the sixties with the sexual revolution and declassification of homosexuality as a psychiatric problem. Now, with the legalization of 'gay marriages' is the new form of liberalization with the blatant lie that the only reason it had never developed before is because we live in a society of brutes and oppressors who hold their sexual natures as paramount and refuse to share their hallowed stature with homosexuals. The irony being of course that any one who actually thinks that way is probably homosexual. Yes, the poor employees at the square tire factor are being oppressed, that is why we don't see any square tires on cars to this day. All the while, it is the Church primarily who fights tooth and nail against what only twenty years ago would have been thought an absurdity. Again, people claiming that the Bishops were part of a cover up are actually part of the cover up because it takes a village to rape a child. The safety of non-Catholic children are endangered through these accusation by reducing the suspectability of pedophilia amongst those who are not Catholic priest. Yet, it is good that it did happen in the Church because no people could have or would have bared the brunt of the shame in the way that the Church has, giving a hearing to all victims of child hood sexual abuse, not just Catholics. I, for one am grateful they got their hearing and a recognition of their suffering. I also believe that this is one more area where the Church is way ahead of many nation states. The Church was one of the first institutions where homosexuals had access to high social standing in society and a fairly free run about as homosexuals but the Church unlike the states that endorsed and attempt to normalize homosexuality also denied it and barred it once it began to reveal itself to possess a dormant malicious streak. The Church has also taken the painful steps in addressing pedophilia in a way that no State has ever done. So yeah, I still listen to the Bishops and support them even more.
