"Instead of guiding people to greater human maturity and setting them an example, their abusive behaviour caused great damage for which we feel profound shame and regret. As a result of all this, many people, perhaps even some of you, might ask whether it is good to become a priest; whether the choice of celibacy makes any sense as a truly human way of life....

So I am happy to report that the Associated Press, in a recent story, is a shining exception to that trend.

Child psychologist Peter Adriaenssens...

The latest example came yesterday morning in a speech to a group of Brazilian bishops...

According to the Vatican Information Service report:

Later in the apostolic nunciature, "I met with some victims of abuses committed by members of the clergy and religious. It was a moment of intense emotion and prayer," said the Holy Father. At his meeting with people responsible for protecting children and young people in Church environments "I thanked them and encouraged them to continue their work, which is part of the Church's long tradition of concern for the respect, education and formation of new generations."

Most people, he believes, came away thinking that the pope went for the main purpose of meeting sex abuse victims, and that Brits by and large weren't happy about him being there.

"These revelations were for me a shock, and a great sadness. It is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly ministry was possible," he said. ...

There's just one problem: Turns out Archbishop Martin hasn't talked to the pope since February.

But in a nutshell, two Dutch papers have published the (partial) transcripts of secret tape recordings made by a sex abuse victim in April meetings with Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who retired in January as head of the Mechelen-Brussel archdiocese.

The abuser? A fellow Belgian bishop who resigned in disgrace shortly after the recordings were made. The victim? His now 42-year-old nephew, whom he had abused for 13 years, both before and after his 1985 consecration as bishop.

But the fresh scandal is that the transcripts show Cardinal Danneels...

Here's how it opens:

Greg Erlandson decided to write a book on the clergy sex abuse crisis because the secular media kept raising questions about Pope Benedict XVI's handling of cases in their coverage of a new wave of clergy sex abuse in dioceses around the world.

For him, there was a "genuine curiosity about...

Irish media are reporting, some with a degree of surprise, that this week the archbishop received a hero's welcome at a massive gathering of lay faithful in Italy, and that sources in the Vatican say he's been in regular, extensive contact with Pope Benedict XVI on the clerical sex abuse crisis.

Here's the salient section from a television interview he did with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

In a recent interview, Fabrice Hadjadj, a 39 year-old French convert from Judaism twelve years ago and former atheist and anarchist, told the French newspaper Le Figaro that the current crisis lived by the Church is not unprecedented.

And yet, five months after its first report on the case, it is repeating the same gross error.

The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal has the story:

In the end, (James) O'Bryan reconciled with the church because of the actions of a priest — the same reason he said he left in the first place.

O'Bryan, now 89 and living in northern California, was one of three plaintiffs who sued the Vatican in 2004, alleging that the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church had orchestrated a cover-up of sexual abuse through centuries of secret policies. He said he was sexually abused by a Louisville priest in 1928.

The gossip site TMZ August 9 reported the comments of Mel Gibson’s 91-year-old father, a schismatic traditionalist who has been accused of various other failings, including anti-Semitism....

Judge Burke became a blunt critic of the bishops at times, scolding those who she felt were not cooperating fully with the review board, but she had words of praise for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Cardinal Ratzinger was one of only a few Vatican officials who was willing to meet with her as interim chair, In a subsequent interview, she praised the cardinal "for being far more open to meeting with members of the national review board than our own bishops and cardinals. He took in everything we had to say and answered our questions. And we pulled no punches."

But The New York Times has got nothing on the British press.

You'd think this would get a little more attention.

A new organization that calls itself a grassroots group of Catholics upset with the hierarchy's current handling of the sex abuse crisis is asking Catholics to voice their disapproval of Pope Benedict XVI by ponying up only a penny when parishes do the Peter's Pence collection later this month that provides humanitarian and emergency relief for people around the world.

Many people assume that the Church is simply a religious version of a multinational corporation. The Pope is something between a CEO and a king, and he can snap his fingers and make the entire People of God jump to his command. This misunderstanding underlies a fair amount of anti-Catholicism...