The local bishops, not the Vatican, are usually the authority who censure priests and others who publicly reject defined Catholic teachings. There are too many liberal Bishops in the U.S., for sure. As for your petty remark about pedophiles, I take it very personally as a Catholic. There are about 100,000 Catholic priests in the world, and 99.99% of them are wonderful men who have sacrificed their lives to serve others. The life of a priest is not a glamorous and easy one. That there are a couple hundred HOMOSEXUAL CHILD MOLESTERS that the media chose to call "pedophiles" is sickening, but not surprising. Take 100,000 Protestant ministers, school teachers, therapists, artists, or sailors, and I will guarantee you that you'll find at least a few hundred homosexual perverts and child molesters in each group. And you will also find their superiors doing whatever they can to hide the scandals from public view. What you won't find is the media bashing them to death every day like they do with their favorite whipping post, the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope has correctly defined this problem as a HOMOSEXUAL one, because the vast majority of the victims were post-pubescent adolescents. The Vatican has also publicly stated that homosexuals should not be ordained and should be weeded out of the Church clergy. The media, of course, does not make these statements widely known. Catholics are not happy about this scandal, and most Catholics are very conservative in our politics and in our way of life. Frankly, I'm getting more than a little tired of the Catholic bashing that goes on within this "Free Republic" web site.