Why the Catholic Church looks so damn bad

Is best illustrated in this little thread over at CAEI.  Basically Mark gives a hi-five to Archbishop Gomez for his public smack-down of the long entrenched Mahony and gang, who have come in many ways to exemplify everything that made the Church abuse scandal so heinous.  You see, it's not that priests raped kids.  That's bad, don't get me wrong.  It's horrible.  But all but the most zealous anti-Catholic/anti-God/religion fanatics and bigots would try to label an entire institution based on the failings and sins of some of its members.  Which is why we don't condemn the school systems, medical professions, sporting world, or anything else when stories of sexual abuse arise.  Usually it's discovered, the individuals are brought to justice, jobs are terminated, life goes on.

But there is no equal to the Catholic Church when it comes to the systemic cover up that has gone on behind the scenes, including since the abuse scandal broke.  Really.  Think of any other instance where so many individuals in a given area were behind sex abuse, and then it was covered up by such networks of people working together to silence all accusers.  The Boy Scouts maybe? I don't know the details there.  It seems to be a mixture of scout leaders who abused kids and scout leaders whose records were hidden.  That's the closest I can think of, and it's basically led to the scouts being smacked around and forced to conform to the dogmas of the Left.

But the Church not only has that history of grand, sweeping conspiracies to cover up abuse, sometimes using the most unthinkable and gross tactics imaginable, but it keeps on giving the impression that this is business as usual.  So we have this story where Archbishop Gomez has publicly chastised Mahony and Bishop Curry.  But come to find out, that really doesn't mean anything.  Life can continue to go on if the Holy See doesn't step in.  And based on at least one or two comments, it seems fine to some if the See doesn't.  Plus, as a couple other commenters point out, this looks like Abp Gomez only did this because, well, he was forced to.  In fact, based on some accounts, he fought like a mad dog to keep anything like this going public, and has only made this completely symbolic gesture at the 11th hour because there was no other option.

In the midst of this, some have said let's call a spade a spade, and say this all stinks to high heaven.  Others have pointed out the rather bad witness this gives when a young single girl is promptly fired for getting pregnant, and yet men directly linked to the horror and destruction of those young people are allowed to move on, well, quite nicely. And yet others are rushing to the defense of the Archbishop, or even Bishop Mahony.

When one looks at the atomic reaction that happened at Penn State, another instance of 'systemic cover up', the contrasts are at best embarrassing  At worse, they feed into one of those old anti-Catholic stereotypes that Catholics think rules apply to everyone else, but never them.  I don't think it's true, but I sure have to admit that the Church hierarchy seems hellbent on making it look as if that image is true.