Maybe if we deny it long enough it will go away

The child molestation scandal in the Catholic Church is spreading. Lisa Miller in Newsweek shares some insights about what is going on. The Western Democracies value the individual, the Church values the community (I personally wish we valued community a bit more than we do, though, as Japan demonstrates, it is possible to overdo it). The Church seems to be living in a 17th century world and has ignored the way women have been integrated into the workplace and public life. Women are almost completely absent from the Church power structure. In a closed society of the Church hierarchy, many men believe they have been put in their position for a reason -- meaning they are entitled to its perks. The Church, because it represents God, cannot be seen to have a scandal among its representatives, though it would be better to excise the bad elements than to hide the problem.

Miller's solution is to get more women into the Church's positions of power under the belief that a woman, especially a mother, would have handled the whole scandal differently. In a companion piece, George Weigel isn't convinced. He cautions that women have been known to be molesters, that public schools have had similar scandals, and they also have the instinct to deny a scandal exists even if it keeps a perpetrator in contact with kids. He notes the USA Church, since its own scandal, now responds swiftly and appropriately (by secular standards) to keep kids safe from predators. Even getting rid of the celibacy rule doesn't protect kids because a lot of molesters are married. At the moment, it is the Catholic Church that is deep in scandal, made more severe and newsworthy because it is so large and so global.