"Everybody does it"

Rob is right, of course, that "Protestant ministers engage in sexual abuse or in sexual activity with minors, too" is hardly the most important thing to be said about the clergy-abuse scandal in the Catholic context.  And, just to be clear, please insert here ________ the most unyielding and furious denunciation one can imagine of those priests and bishops who have engaged in or mishandled the abuse of children.  Still, it seems to me that the following are true, and troubling:

(1) Non-Catholics have, in my experience and reading, too often indulged the temptation to smugness, as if there were something particularly "Catholic" about the conduct at issue ("Ah, that celibacy thing . . . ", or worse.).  There just isn't. 

(2)  The press has -- and no, to point this out is not to blame the press for the sins and errors of priests and bishops -- systemically (one might even suspect "gleefully") presented this issue as (almost) entirely a "Catholic" one and has, in addition and in many ways, mis-reported the issue in unsurprising but still irritating ways.

(3) The sex-abuse-litigation to date, and the reporting about that litigation, has been Catholic-centric in part, I suspect, because Catholic institutions, leaders, and dioceses are more attractive defendants for big-money purposes. 

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