Just a few comments:
Joseph made a comment about the Pope supposedly being as close to perfect to God as possible. Two things in regards to that:
1) We are all called to be holy as the Father is holy. You are to be as holy as the Pope is to be holy. Yes, because he is the visible head of the Church, we should certainly expect it, but no more so than I should expect it of you and me.
2) We sin, and Pope John Paul II sins. And because his life is a public life, this comes out while yours, for instance, very often remain private. It is an unfair criticism, unless you want to lay out all your faults for us. Both you and the Pope can and do receive the Lord's inifinte mercy and forgiveness, and I'm betting the Pope asks for the Lord for forgiveness very often, as I do believe he strives to live a holy life by God's grace, pleasing to our God.
Thus, your statement, I believe, was quite unfair and untrue, because it is not applicable to just him, but to all. So don't condemn him sins until you are through thoroughly condemning your own, which will probably continue until you depart this earth, just as they will for him.
POINT #2:
Have priests who are TRULY guilty of sexual crimes be punished? Absolutely. We are to be subject to the civil laws; there is no question about that.
Are all the reports valid? Ceratainly not. While the filth is being exposed, there are always those who abuse this domino effect in the hopes of money or getting their names in print and so forth. Not all claims are justified.
Thus, of course, coverups should not be happening. The due course of the law should reveal the guilty and set free the innocent.
Now, did coverups occur? Yes. Does that mean that any bishop who participated in a coverup of one form or another did so for malicious reasons? How are we to know? Motive is a tricky thing, and while some probably did it to save their own skin, others may have done it for other reasons, which we certainly don't know, considering this latest story is very knew, and we have no right to jump to "GUILTY" conclusions. Again, the law will find the guilty and justly punish them (at least, we all hope so!)
So, in sum, do our Catholic leaders mess up? Of course they do. They are merely human, and humans mess up, often in very big ways. That doesn't mean that we should give up on humanity, does it? Are you giving up on humanity? I doubt it. And I'm not giving up on our divinely instituted Church, because while it is made up of sinners, just like the rest of humanity, God made it good, and at its core, it maintains that divine spark of love, hope, and the Gospel message.
As for any insults that will come my way, expect me to ignore them, because that shows irrational thinking and jumping to conclusions, which is not how we solve problems, but how we make them worse.
God bless you all, and I ask for your prayers that we learn from our sins so that the Body of Christ will be ever strengthened, and our walk with Christ be ever narrowed.
Grant