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Boston was not the first. Back in the Seventies (I think) or the Eighties, the San Antonio Archdiocese was scandalized by the same problem. The Bishop was sending these creeps to a private sanitarium run by the Church for homosexual priests somewhere out in New Mexico.

Think tank writers, like other scholars, are expected to cite the publisher, especially when the book is pivotal to the essay. Also, unless Free Congress published the book or a related position paper back in 1982, it's inaccurate to claim "we told you so."

Part of the zeitgeist of the 60's was "don't trust anybody over 30". Well, people under 30 hadn't had much experience with priestly pederasty, thanks to the vigilance of people over 30. But inherited wisdom was out of fashion, and the cautions of older and wiser men were laughed at. Maybe the old ways weren't perfect - but was the new one? Under which system were more innocent people injured?

I blame that older & wiser generation. I don't remember anyone from that generation actually explaining to me why their well-refined rules of behavior were the way they were. They just handed down the rules as gospel, made us obey them, and that was that.

It's taken me a long time to recognize that a lot of the restrictions & standards they had made some sense after all. If I had understood them earlier, I'd have respected them more, and would've been much more able to sort out the actual good advice from the mere unthinking hidebound traditions. (Instead of rejecting it all out of hand and having to re-learn everything myself.)

I lived in a Catholic neighborhood in the early and mid 70s, pederasty by the clergy was already an open secret, anytime somebody got transfered in or out everybody started pulling their string to find out if they had done anything. To pretend that this is a recent problem is to live in complete ignorance of history. The only thing recent is that we're finding out that things weren't as bad as some had feared... they're worse.

Clearly,the hippie/militant/deviancy/"anyhing-goes" explosion and rebellion against America's traditional values and decency that began in the late 60s has bore many poisonous fruits....

The infestations of generational abhorrant behavior will prove to be a wide-spread cancer upon the church and American society in general.