[remarkEon]

The rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests is a function of a couple things, but chiefly among them was the cultural moment and who, exactly, was entering Seminary at that time. You can trace back the overwhelming majority of abusers to specific cohorts. Not trying to get conspiratorial about it, it’s just a fact that this was something boomer priests did and they all joined the Church during the sexual revolution in the 1970s.

Not really sure I have a point other than to say modern Catholics are quite aware of what people think about the Church and waffle between being dismissive (because critics genuinely don’t understand it) or reactionary.

[thatguy0900]

Well, personally, I'm not concerned as much about the actual low level priests. You'll get a few bad guys no matter what you're doing in an organization that big. It's the shuffling them around after being caught and not going to the police when they knew. If the middle and the top also have the bad guys you have to start questioning what the organization is really about. And I struggle to believe that it's just one generation of priests that was bad while all the other ones were perfect celibates, to be honest. This was just the generation that ran into media that couldn't be silenced.