Here's the thing: The percentage of priests who are pedophiles is small.

[MineralMan]

There are pedophiles everywhere. The problem really is that the Roman Catholic Church officially and regularly covered up such crimes and failed to punish offending priests internally. Worse, they universally failed to report such incidents to the civil authorities. This has gone on for decades, and probably for centuries.

Instead of being handed over to the civil authorities, priests who committed such grave offenses against children confessed their "sins" to other priests, who could not tell anyone else about it. Instead, the offenders were given some sort of penance to perform and were given absolution (forgiveness) for their actions.

What that means is that pedophile priests were able to continue to groom and abuse children again and again, seeking out new victims from those children they supervised, taught, or had in catechism classes or who served as altar boys. Those who knew of their offenses through the confessional, were under oath not to reveal anything told them by a confessing priest.

The long, long history of child sexual abuse is the fault of the Church itself. Its practices and secrecy allowed countless thousands of children around the world to suffer at the hands of the Church's official representatives. Under protest, and with continuing attempts to cover up these incidents, some information is being revealed. But, the full extent of child sexual abuse by priests will probably never be known by the public.

It is the official practice of the Roman Catholic Church to "handle" such things internally, rather than reporting these crimes. Only under duress and official court orders is anything revealed, and only so much is revealed that must be revealed. The rest remains hidden.

For me, that is the primary issue, and is a fault for which I cannot forgive the Roman Catholic Church. Not ever.

Note: Reposted as an OP from a reply in another thread.