Happy Holy Week! The neverending priest-pedophile scandal is distasteful enough without all the political baggage attached to it. The compulsion to inject extraneous issues into the discussion just adds to the grossness factor. The scandal has been exploited by critics of the church to get their jabs in about gay marriage and abortion. Buried within a local columnist's attention-grabbing call for Pope Benedict to resign was this: "The hierarchy's loss of moral authority has been wonderfully liberating for some Catholics now free to ignore, with good conscience, bishops' various directives on gays, birth control, divorce and remarriage, etc." In other words, lemonade has been made from lemons. Warning: what looks like lemonade doesn't always taste like it. The abuse of authority by certain priests to sexually abuse children serves as a proxy for those who attack the church on a whole number of questions. That said, reflexive defenders of the church are often too quick to step into these battles as "defenders of the faith" only to appear to others as defenders of the filth. Pick your battles. Even though there are hateful people that will exploit every church scandal to discredit the teachings of the church, that doesn't invalidate the main point: the church, along with law enforcement, acted in a horrific manner.

Well said, Dan. I think you nailed it.

Let's drain the swamp, shine some sunlight on the child molestors in the church, let them know that pedophelia nor cover ups will be tolerated.

But let's not grab this as the opportunity to justify all sorts of other things that aren't Catholic.

Why do some Catholics feel as though they need to be liberated from the Catholic Church? I'm not even sure what that means.

I would suspect that many were not really practicing Catholics in the first place. So just walk away. It's easy.

But don't preach moral authority from a hole in the ground and if one is that screwed up about their religious beliefs and/or upbringing it might be time to give it up and stop talking about it.

The problem I see is ex-Catholics seem to be on a crusade against the church. Almost like ex-smokers - they can't stand to see others lighting up and would put a stop to it.

btw - Margery Eagan is a confused liberal airhead. Would never put much stalk in anything she had to say and she has demonstrated anti-Catholic sentiment consistently.

Speaking of Margery Eagan, with reference to TKK, am missing the old Dan Flynn fill-in. I suspect the book has much to do with the absence.