Am I the only person who thinks the Catholic Church may have gotten fucked with the pedo scandals? The other side of the story that I've heard was that the Catholic Church leadership in the US had no clue what to do or how to handle the pedophiles in their ranks. So, they consulted lawyers who told them to conceal, to move pedophiles around, and to deny, deny, deny. Then the story went public in a way that was impossible to deny anymore and the cover up became a bigger scandal than the original crimes, which were bad enough.
I'm not trying to defend the Catholic Church here - I am not a Catholic - but I wonder if the above information comports with anyone else's understanding. From my perspective, it seems that church leadership panicked, made a dumb decision by listening to lawyers, and then got hammered by atheists who have a conniption when you point out that your child is far more likely to get molested by public school teachers than a member of the clergy.