Firstly the Catholic Church is the first institution to deal with child molesting, you might say it should never have happened, on that issue you are 100+% correct, not to excuse what happened, to explain what I'm sure happened, we should study what my Church and all Christian Churches to some extent believe and preachYou bastards are all pretty worked up about arguments that will run in circles.
Side (1) churches are corrupt and that's proven by their actions.
Side (2) you can't judge the majority by the actions of the minority.
Side (1) when the minority we're judging them by are leaders within the church we should be judging them harshly.
Side (2) but others do good things that we should judge the organisation on.
Here's my take on things. The most outspoken critic here was once a follower of the church, his point is very valid and his response to seeing the issues that exist was to walk away and seemingly try to help others to at least not ignore the issues.
On.the opposite side are people with unshakable faith in God and through that faith, in religious organisations.
My take is that the ideals that are supposed to be represented by God and religion should be upheld by the leaders of the church, if they're not upholding the ideals, then I think parishioners need to be at the forefront of holding them to account, not trying to defend the organisation that isn't cutting out the cancer within.
(1) The churches's pholophsy is for its followers and perhaps (all mnkind) to repent and change their sinfull ways, this applies to all its faithfull and also its clergy
(2) Paedophiles including paedophile Priests all find a prey, and by moving them to another parish, the heirichy belieeved that they no longer had an oppurtunity to offend, it was done with the intension of stopping their evil acts not to give them another oppurtunity to do so.
(3) As to why their superiors did not report them its most probably because, the confessional is sealed, priests throught history have been put to death ifor refusing to disclose what was told to them in confession. All western societies respect the seal of the confessional just like they do with Lawyer/ criminal confidentiality (exept in Victoria of course).. AS for that notorious Paedophile Priest Rigdale in Victoria , I saw him interviewed and he said that he did not confess molesting boys, (which i found amazing coming from a Priest of all people),
I've discussed this matter with an experienced priest at length, he told me that prior to the permissiveness get out of hand the % of ofending priests was less than 2%. After the permissive society became rampant, the % grew to 4-5%. the great majority of which was as a result of priests breaking their vows by faving sex with women, (which is sinfull but not illegial) this dosen't supprise me because i've seen women try to seduce Priests.
As for paedophile priests molesting boys, one Priest told me that he visits schools and on afew occassions 10 and younger year old kids would run past him an try to punch him in the balls.
We all know that for some years now very young kids are to watch porn with their parients or perhaps even themselves, hence wanting to explore the jucy stuff, its also been reportered that some girls start to have sex at 10.
The logo sex sells greed is good has led to the permissive society we have now. and no one in their right mind can blame the Church for it.