I wrote an article entitled "Notre Dame: Scandal! and growing Catholic outrage" which is well done. Of course, I anticipated that the secularists would have something negative to say. After all, I am writing to support Catholicism, which is a target for anti-religious zealots who wish to sin without any criticism from Christians. It doesn't take long for them to post their comments which are designed to shut me up and make me feel embarrassed about my religion.

Well, I'm not embarrassed about being a Catholic, and I am proud of my answer back to my critics so I'm recording it here since it is so important. I don't know that readers will read my comment, which is so far down the article page but people really need to understand the issue on child sexual abuse. Consequently, it bears repeating here.

This blog is a recounting of some slice of life happening day to day in my life. The portion of my life that I wish to share today is my comment in response to those who attack my Catholic faith based on child sexual abuse. What these people write has nothing to do with understanding in a realistic and is not based in fact. They wish to discredit Catholicism and mock Christians. They wish us to go away if we will not relent and accept as a part of our religion their liberal agenda and anti-life secular belief system. I am posting here my answer to their objections to Catholic believers who do not agree with Notre Dame and other Catholic Universities giving a speaking platform and honorary degrees to politicians who are boldly and unashamedly anti-life. http://www.examiner.com/x-4317-Denver-Roman-Catholic-Examiner~y2009m5d9-Notre-Dame-Scandal-and-growing-Catholic-outrage (the link doesn't work)

Here are two of the lame attacks:

By TheOne: "Maybe instead of getting all indignant over the President having the right to have his own opinion, just maybe they should lobby the Vatican for an 11th commandment! "Priests shall not Molest our Children", Then they just might, for once, be doing something useful! The Church is supposed to be here to give Guidance when asked, not tell people how to run their lives. When the Abortion Clinics have no Catholics going to them, then they can point their finger and talk about what other people do. They might try Turning in, instead or relocating Priests that they know have molested children and covering up for them, while they're at it too!"

By Seriously: "SERIOUSLY - Catholic=HYPOCRITE

Stop your priest from molesting young boys. Stop your ridiculous policy on birth control that leads to the abandoning of children in third world countries, stop your moral judgment over others while your history shows you to be the force behind countless deaths.

But really, start with the molesting of young boys. Once you have that under control, lets have a public debate on morality - once you have proven that you actually have some..."

Here is my slam:

Child sexual abuse is a human problem, not a Catholic principle or dogma. The Catholic Church has addressed this issue within our ranks, with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops participating in identifying those who harmed children and leveling consequences.

Charol Shakeshaft, the Hofstra University scholar who prepared a draft report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in 2000, stated regarding teacher-student sex, "roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a school employee from a single decade—1991-2000. That compares with about five decades of cases of abusive priests." As of yet, I haven't seen people rush to attack educators on grounds that they are child abusers.

The American Religious Identification Survey that was published in March 2009, following over 220,000 interviews and 3 surveys, displays a table on page 5 showing that only 25% of the adult US population religiously identifies as Catholic. If we were to postulate that 25% of the adults guilty of child sexual abuse in schools is Catholic, that would result in 75% being non-Catholic.

Researcher and historian Philip Jenkins claims that the Roman Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out by a secular media which he claims fails to highlight similar sexual accusations in other religious groups, such as the Anglican Communion, Islam and Judaism, and various Protestant churches, communities. Jenkins later authored the book The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice in 2003, touching on some of the same issues.[48] Similar experiences are described in e.g. scouting sex abuse cases and Jehovah's Witnesses and child sex abuse. (Wikipedia)

Furthermore, statistics consistently find that more girls are sexually abused than boys, and the past scandal regarding Catholic priests rightly accused them of molesting boys. 30-40% of child sexual abuse is found to have come from family members and some 40% is the result of other children who are older or bigger than the victims.

Seriously, one of the best things we can do for our society is stop watching and believing the left-wing secular bias on the nightly news and educate ourselves.