Both the BBC News and the Telegraph specifically comment on the fact that for all the warm words and, no doubt sincere apology, Pope Benedict's letter suggests only prayer and Bible Reading as remedies.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Herald's news headline is Pope to beatify Newman at Coventry airport (yes, I know it's a weekly with a presumably tiny staff, but you'd have thought they could have foreseen this letter being issued today).
What an utter whitewash. Prayer and Bible Readings! Praying doesn't do anything except make the person who prays feel better in themself.
In itself, no bad thing: if someone is facing a personal crisis and believes that praying will make a difference, it probably will - as will as determination to conquer, visualising success, focus, and many other positive-thinking behaviours (source: common sense and years of observational and anecdotal evidence).
But as a way of finding an actual, practical solution - pah!
No specific measures to ensure something like this never happens again. No systemic, structural or ideological changes to the Church or the priesthood.
There is no acknowledgement that the Church's policies of forbidding its priests from consenting adult relations, and its condemnation of any adult consenting relations outside of sacramental marriage (and then only for procreation) have contributed massively towards this problem. (Squeeze a balloon, it expands somewhere else).
There is a traditional Irish problem, transplanted to some extent into the Irish parishes in England, that the priest is an authority figure, who must be respected and obeyed, even more so than the Headmaster and the Constable - who have always been better trained and more heavily regulated.
The Archbishop of Vienna has suggested that celibacy is possibly a cause of priestly paedophilia but then made it clear he didn't want celibacy abolished. Facepalm! (Or heavily leaned on...)
I'm not suggesting that paedophilia is always and only committed by people unable to have normal consenting adult relationships; I'm certainly not saying it's either characteristic of or unique to Catholic priests.
But when the culture is to ignore it and cover it up, that's when the organisation has to scrutinise itself, reflect and reform. The teaching and medical professions, for example, generally act swiftly and constantly review their procedures to minimalise the risk. They don't always get it right, but I have confidence that they take the problem seriously. I am still not convinced that Pope Benedict and his enormous army of advisers actually even understand what the problem is.
Meanwhile the Guardian yesterday reminded us of the fact that there have been steps taken in England and Wales but strongly suggests that it's too little too late. It's a tricky subject in Britain. All going back to Henry VIII. There is fear in the Establishment - irrespective of party allegiance or none at all - at upsetting the Catholic Church. There is history of anti-Catholicism in this country, and people of my mother's generation still believe that the Protestant state is anti-Catholic: indeed, the Constitution still is.
So the State, Establishment, call it what you will, treads fearfully. They know that any attempt to carry out a legitimate and justified investigation will be interpreted and spun - with ill intent - as being a typical English attack on the Catholic Church. And as soon as Tweedledum Nichols*-O'Brien complains, Tweedledee Williams comes out in solidarity because, ultimately, preserving the privileged position of religions and their right to bigotry matters more to him than social justice.
I have no knowledge of any incidents of abuse conducted by priests to people I knew when I was growing up. I have encountered a lot of hearsay evidence - not just on the internet - that suggests that there is a historical problem.
FTR, I have a slight connection (not a relative) with a priest who was accused some years ago in the News of the World. I don't know what steps were taken to investigate, this was at the height of accusations about children's homes (with counter-accusations of stories being made up for compensation purposes). All I know is that he remains a priest but not attached to a parish (though that may be because he's an intellectual).
And, again, I call on the Catholic Church - and all those that who regard themselves as members of it - to STFU and stop condemning normal healthy adults who have normal consenting adult sexual relationships. The serial monogamists, polyamorists, unmarried and gay among us do not sin**; those that colluded and covered up attacks on children are the sinners. Please spare us your rhetoric and concentrate on the evil people
* actually, Nichols appears to have more brain cells and political nous, by an order of magnitude, than his dreadful predecessor, Murphy-O'Connor
** in this respect, anyway - we probably lie, hate steal to much the same extent as married monogamous or sexually self-denying church-attending Catholics
