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The Church is really at crossroads here in these cases. They have to choose: defend the cases and lose the faithful or restore the trust of the faithful and essentially plead nolo contendere to the lawsuits, insisting only on some reasonable evidence that the abuse actually took place.

I don't think it is a hard choice... if you are in the business of bringing souls to Jesus.

I keep thinking of Padre Pio during all of this. If these Cardinals and Bishops and Priests cannot imitate Jesus, why don't they look at the life of one of their own who lived during their lifetime - and ask what Padre Pio would do if he were a Cardinal.

A timeless message for Cardinal Law and some of the other American Cardinals:

"You are flowers who shed no perfume,
but stench that makes the whole world reek."

St. Catherine of Siena

You're right, it shouldn't be a hard choice .... if the Church is really in the salvation business. That's the hard choice, or question: is the Church about God, Jesus and Salvation, as it claims to be, or is it about temporal power and the personal comfort (and apparently pleasure) of the clergy.

This has been a recurring theme in the history of the Church, from the forgery of the Donation of Constantine to the conflicts between Innocent III and Emperor Friederich, to the Reformation and Counterreformation.

The encouraging thing is that the Church has survived through it all, the frightening thing is that they keep getting it wrong and creating crises of faith by the blatant contradictions between the Church's teachings and the behavior of the hierarchy. Someday, they won't be able to survive their own stupidity.