General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Catholics are as much to blame for clergy abuse as you are to blame for the WARS [View all]HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)church had an official (but hidden) policy of covering up pedophilia, it's still relevant to your comment that you are (sarcasm) reassured by the fact that it was secret policy.
Except it wasn't. The document just outlines church policy for dealing with accusations of such crimes and in fact explicitly labels them as heinous.
It is not the church's policy to condone pedophilia among priests. That is a different thing from saying that officials of the church have sometimes covered up or minimized cases of pedophilia among priests.
But the fact is that belonging to the church is not support for pedophilia (a sin in the eyes of the church) in the same way that being a US citizen is support for, say, droning.
Because droning is *official policy,* whereas pedophilia is not.