I don't want to attack the Catholic faith but just want to know just how this (child rape) has been allowed to be covered up and allowed to continue. History, policy, why do they cover up the horrible deeds of the brothers of the cloth?

Things are not being changed very fast because there are good priest and great churches. How do you bring down the bad guys with out getting the good guys dirty?

Credible evidence? confessions not revealed
Statue of limitations? victims are much older when they report the act.
criminal charges? hard to bring to court
media pressure? witch hunt
The church is paying off victims instead of pressing charges which is making things worse in the long wrong.

I was brought up Catholic ( am now baptist) and the way I saw it was priests were the closest thing to GOd, they were the go-between. I believe the Catholic church has become about appearances-and less the actual religion...remember though there are bad in all religions...there is a great article in the last issue of time magazine that

woops! left the keyboard for a sec and the kids posted for me..hahaha....anyway the article disussed this very issue in great detail and said some bishops were no having a 0 tolerance..i think it is worht the read....

the thing is, priests are humans and have human needs too. but the catholic church forbids them to have sex or whatever. so they take it out on the people closest to them, and easiest to get to, unfortunally these are children. this happens a hole lot in my homecountry too. the catholic church tries to hide all this from the outside world, to keep their image up. over here their image is pretty bad and not a lot of people go to church anymore. so they can't use any bad publicity. this is so wrong and makes me so terrible mad:pissed:

I've been thinking about the same thing sorraya. I think since it is a sin for preist to be married and have sex to them the sin of having sex with a child is no worse. A sin is a sin to them. If sex is sinning with a consenting women/male or a child.

yes indeed. and the thing is, children are closer to them then women. they work with children in the church and all that, so they are more easy to reach, and therefor abuse....

I AGREE THAT SIN IS SIN BUT THE DIFFERENCE IS ONE SIN (MOLESTING KIDS) IS AGAINST THE LAW--ALSO THE "RULE" OF PRIESTS NOT HAVING SEX WITH ANYONE IS A MAN-MADE ONE WITHIN THE RELIGIOUS SPECTRUM--

SHERRI