I wanted to entitle this blog post “Catholic priests molest little girls” ...

... when unrepentant old hippie did her blogpost about the batshit craziness of Blob Blogging Wingnut. I felt that I should blog about priests who sexually abuse female children.

Pope Benny Ratzo recently pontificated upon the harm done to children. It was not an apology for the centuries of tacit complicity between the clerics who abuse children and those who don't. It was not an admission the Catholic Church and its refusal to be accountable for the actions of abusive priests, its hypocrisy that denies and evades responsibility, and its arrogance are morally bankrupt.

While the focus remains fixed on priests (men) who abuse boys, it is likely that more girls than boys have been subjected to sexual exploitation by members of the RCC clergy.

Why would a church committed to purging from its ranks potentially predatory clerics focus its scrutiny on prospective priests with homosexual tendencies? That would imply two things we know not to be true: that the crisis in the church was triggered by sexual orientation, not by sexual misconduct and its coverup, and that the victims of rapists in Roman collars were all male.

Why would a church that claims to be intent on healing and reconciliation effectively erase the traumatic experiences of so many women and girls? Kathleen M. Dwyer thinks she knows why. ''In order to be successful in blaming gays, the hierarchy knows that the sexual abuse of girls must be swept into invisibility and be internalized in the culture as a rare exception," said Dwyer, herself victimized by a priest.

''I can only assume that women victims simply aren't newsworthy, regardless of what we have to say," concluded a dispirited Ann Hagan Webb, a psychologist who heads the New England chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Fifty percent of the organization's members are women. ''The Vatican's decision to ban gay men from the priesthood is an insult to survivors of either gender. The vast number of girls and women abused by priests underscores the obvious, that banning gay priests will not solve the problem of sexual abuse in the church."

Thousands of women who have been sexually abused by priests in their childhood have remained invisible and silent, some by choice, some shamed by RCC doctrine that implies that as little girls, their 'female allure' made priests commit these sins and thus, are the cause of their own abuse.

That's quite the racket you have there, Benny Ratzo.