In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "A Saint, He Ain’t" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/opinion/dowd-a-saint-he-aint.html?ref=opinion), Maureen Dowd recalls how she nearly rolled off the alter during her christening, then rips into the forthcoming canonization of Pope John Paul II, whom, she says, ignored child molestation within the Catholic Church. Dowd's conclusion:
"The church is giving its biggest prize to the person who could have fixed the spreading stain and did nothing. The buck, or in this case, the Communion wafer, doesn’t stop here. There is something wounding and ugly about the church signaling that those thousands of betrayed, damaged victims are now taken for granted as a slowly fading asterisk.
John Paul may be a revolutionary figure in the history of the church, but a man who looked away in a moral crisis cannot be described as a saint.
When the church elevates him, it is winking at the hell it caused for so many children and young people in its care.
A big holy wink."
The war against child molestation? I spent some five years of my life trying to fight it, and I watched with revulsion as as many people I knew looked the other way.
Expect the church to actively combat this plague? Sorry, but I have no expectations from organized religion of any kind.
Saints? There have been a few in my lifetime. Irena Sendler (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2010/04/irena-sendler-catholic-woman-of.html) certainly deserves to be canonized. But heck, she was only a Polish nurse who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War II and not a pope.
