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In the cases of the priests who were being moved from church to church, the issue had come up other than in situations when the offending priest was the penitent - so that isn't the issue at hand at all.

For some reason I thought the authorities weren't notified because who ever was in charge had found out through a confession.

In many of these cases, it was the inaction of the individual dioceses themselves - because the bishops did not need the approval of the Holy See to move these priests to places where they would have no contact with children or to move them out of active ministry altogether.

It's easy to understand in a huge organization why every personnel decision doesn't have to go to the top. What's hard to figure is why nobody thought going to the police was a good idea, or am I wrong and most crimes were reported?

What's hard to figure is why nobody thought going to the police was a good idea, or am I wrong and most crimes were reported?

Someone posted a chart showing over the years the reports of this crime within the catholic church. I asked of these numbers how many if any were reported and jail time served for this crime?...only one poster replied and apparently he knew of only a couple......out of hundreds reported. I still do not have any figures but it would be interesting to see if or not these crimes were prosecuted. My take is very few were until I see evidence otherwise.

For some reason I thought the authorities weren't notified because who ever was in charge had found out through a confession.

In some cases it came up in the confessional, in others the crime itself took place in the confessional - both of those situations become more complicated by virtue of that. Most were found out in other ways.

I don't know about either of those. Certainly there was a time when these issues were dealt with more justly in house than out of it - and we have found out the hard way that we are no longer in it. And then there were other cases (the one with the Milwaukee school for deaf boys comes to mind) where the police investigated, and couldn't find enough evidence to make an arrest.

Do we really have to be so PC that the obvious needs to be stated with every post. Of course all allegations need to be investigated and if the individual is found guilty why not worry about the perpetrators human dignity behind prison walls.

If we must call it "PC" so be it, but in this issue, yes, we do. The media hasn't been making this distinction - certainly this judgment by Dawkins on the Pope is one of the more egregious cases. I'm not sure that all of the posters here are willing to grant it either.

An anti-Catholic bias (or in Dawkins' case an anti-religion bias) to often has infected the opinion of the critics on all fronts - including the criticism from progressive "Catholics" who wish to use this scandal as a means of changing the Church's doctrines.