Here comes the latest attempt to find a convenient fall guy:

Pope Blames Child Abuse Scandal on Society
Benedict XVI Says Mistreatment of Children Frighteningly Common in Secular Society, Child Porn Considered Normal
CBS News | Dec 12, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican officials Monday that they must reflect on the church’s culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common . .

. . that the scandal must be seen in a broader social context, in which child pornography is seemingly considered normal by society and drug use and sexual tourism are on the rise.

“The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times,” Benedict said.

Terrifying? To the people who’ve been doing it or covering it up for centuries? In all our lives, if there was a place where one was guaranteed to come across the sexual “destruction of children” who were “reduced to articles of merchandise,” it was the Catholic Church.

Childhood sexual abuse has been for so long an endemic but occult practice in the Church that there’s no way for them to publicly acknowledge it. It shows up in one place, so they say it was isolated. It shows up in another, so they say it was a bigger tragedy than they knew. It shows up on another continent, so they say they need time to assess their policies.

It just goes on and on, they refuse to see themselves for who they’ve really been. This is what you call denial. Witness the Pope and other church leaders currently in a phase where the modern world is the culprit.

And as you well know, the Catholic Church hangs on every little wink and nod of the secular world around them, so they can hardly be blamed for merely acting like everybody else:

Mexico bishop says porn, tv to blame for priest abuse
Miguel Angel Gutierrez and Cyntia Barrera Diaz | Apr 16, 2010

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A prominent Roman Catholic bishop in Mexico blamed eroticism on television and Internet pornography for child abuse by priests, in the latest incendiary comments on sex scandals in the church.

“With so much invasion of eroticism, sometimes it’s not easy to stay celibate or to respect children,” Bishop Felipe Arizmendi said during an annual meeting of Mexican bishops near Mexico City on Thursday.

. . and . .

Pope’s No. 2: Pedophilia linked to homosexuality
By BRAD HAYNES (AP) | Dec 12, 2009

SANTIAGO, Chile — The Vatican’s second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests . .

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,” said [Cardinal Tarcisio] Bertone. “That is the problem.”

So, I ask you, you modern people, with your internet surfing and fancy blog reading — which of these things causes you to sexually assault children? The growing normalcy of child molestation, the rise of drug use, the popularity of sexual tourism, naked people on the TV, dirty people on the internet, or homosexuality?

Whaddya mean, the very thought of it still makes you want to puke? You’re no regular, normal person, like a Catholic priest.