Thousands of years ago, the Euthyphro dilemma proved that you can't get morality from religion. At best, religion can trick you into confusing obedience with morality.
All religions sell the lie that they can make you more moral because if you believe that your religion makes you more moral, you will be less likely to question the man in the pulpit. The moral claims of religion are nothing more than a cheap marketing tactic and a way to make you more obedient. Unfortunately, both the clergy and the believers are invested in the lie that their religion makes people more moral.
That's why when a pedophile is discovered among the clergy, the first instinct is to cover up the crime rather than expose it by reporting the pedophile to the police. They cover up pedophilia rather than suffer the humiliation of police involvement to preserve the belief that their religion makes them more moral.
It's not the pedophilia that causes the problem here. Any organization above a certain size that deals with children is going to attract a certain number of predators.
It is the efforts to cover up pedophilia that causes the most damage. The act of covering up a pedophilia incident both places more children in harm's way, and lets the pedophile know that they can get away with it and will be protected by the church.
Because the Catholic church has a much larger hierarchy, they have the infrastructure to cover up far more incidents of pedophilia, which places a larger number of children at risk.
More children are being molested simply to preserve the belief that religion makes people more moral.
Please do not convince yourself that this problem is exclusive to Catholics. They have the organizational infrastructure to cover more up, and those coverups place more children at risk, but if you convince yourself that this is an exclusively Catholic thing, then you might look the other way when it happens under your nose.
Comments