I begin to understand what it must be like to grow up German these days.....

[hedgehog]

I've often wondered what it must be like to look at the elders around you and wonder what this one or that one could have or should have done during the Houlocaust.

Then I see something like this:

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/05/boys-town-founder-fr-flanagan-warned.html

and I realize that people knew what was happening all along.I don't blame most of the laity and the parush priests. They had very limited power. But the Bishops.....

[Matilda]

1. The Germans at least had the excuse that those who spoke out

would most likely wind up in a concentration camp, or dead. Or both.

[Matilda]

2. As an addendum to my reply,

I recently finished reading "Beyond Belief", a new book detailing the abuse suffered by a man when he was a boy in
Ireland, starting at the age of five. He ultimately sued both the priest (who committed suicide before the trial),
and the Vatican (that suit was subsequently withdrawn when the scandal of his case forced the church authorities in
Ireland to act).

His investigations revealed that abuse existed, and it was known, from the earliest days of the church, and from time
to time many church fathers spoke out about it, but the Vatican did nothing. For nearly two thousand years.