The Catholic Church In Pennsylvania

By now, we've all either heard of or skimmed through or read the report.

This, from the Washington Post, sums it up:

More than 300 Catholic priests across Pennsylvania sexually abused children over seven decades, protected by a hierarchy of church leaders who covered it up, according to a sweeping grand jury report released Tuesday.

The details of the abuse and its coverup are hideous.

Apart from the child-raping priests and the protection they enjoyed by the church hierarchy, apart from the physical and psychological damage inflicted on those raped and the collateral damage done to the victims by that hierarchy for covering it up, I would just like to add something I haven't yet seen in the coverage - there's another wrinkle to this story.

While the Catholic Church was protecting and covering up the sex-crimes of some of its members, let's all remember that it was also lecturing everyone else on the evils of:

• Birth control
• Abortion
• Masturbation
• Sex outside of marriage
• Not being straight (i.e. being either "L" or "G" or "B" or "T" and so on)
• Any number of other issues regarding "sexual morality"

The word you're looking for is hypocrisy. Huge blatant hypocrisy.

No amount of contemporary apologies will change that.