This caught my eye lately. (click) It appears a Catholic group has paid yet another settlement in an attempt to compensate victims of sexual abuse on behalf of its clergy. This settlement seems to amount to roughly $440,000 per victim, while the earlier big pay-out for those in a Los Angeles district (click) was around $20,000 per victim. According to this site (click), the Roman Catholic Church has paid about 2.3 billion in restitution since the 50’s. Wow.
It’s not really the money that’s the ‘wow’ part though, but rather the sickening thought that something can continue on like it has for so long. The disheartening thing is that although there are individual priests that are being held accountable, I can only guess how many others contributed to the problem by not speaking up in the first place. Of course I’m not privy to the inner workings of the priesthood, but for this abuse to carry on like it has, one has to imagine that there’s an unspoken code of sorts among its members that allow these crimes to continue. Why is it so hard to ’step up’ and speak your mind when you function as part of a group? Maybe that’s just the group dynamic?
It happens in politics, in policing communities …it even happens on the home front when family and friends turn their backs to obvious problems. Do we all have something to protect that allows us to turn a ‘blind eye’ …perhaps thinking that in the future we might also be spared an honest account of our wrong doings? Maybe we’ve set our sites on our own gains at the expense of innocent others? Is that it …just a ‘dog eat dog’ mentality? Perhaps. Sometimes though, you have to set yourself apart from the crowd - try to envision a bigger picture of things, maybe look back on how stupid little details got you into this mess in the first place.
The problem with abuse in the Catholic Church simply comes down to trust. No one completely trusts a politician, people are easily convinced of corruption within a police force …but how many people would honestly believe that their priest could be involved with such crimes? It’s almost unthinkable …but at the same time, it obviously exists. Could it be unnatural for clergy to adhere to celibacy? This site (click) would have you think not …arguing that “Just as fasting presupposes the goodness of food, celibacy presupposes the goodness of marriage. To despise celibacy, therefore, is to undermine marriage itself—as the early Fathers pointed out.” Lol, the errant logic here is that with fasting, you’ll eventually need food …or you’ll die! Perhaps celibacy might be better replaced with ‘prolonged abstinence’. This other site (click) gets a little more detailed in priesthood requirements (its validity is only as strong as my google search), but seems to trip on itself when it gets into details - I don’t want to post any quotes and over-extend my blogs pg-13 rating 
so you can scroll through it yourself if you’re interested.
Misplacing trust when you’re an adult is part of life. You grow from it, adjust, move on (hopefully) and make your life better from the experience. Misplacing trust when you’re a child is usually life changing - and the unfortunate thing is that a child hasn’t yet had a life to change …and because that’s all they know - they feel they’re to blame. That sucks.
