PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Huffington Post

Jonathan Wolfman

My hometown, Philadelphia, became known over the past decade for its criminally accused and criminally liable priests, 37 of them. One of them, Monsignor William Lynn, the first member of the U.S. Catholic Church hierarchy to suffer a conviction in the scandal, is serving a serious prison term not for rape but for helping to bury the pedophilia scandal by shredding internal Church documents. Copies were subsequently found (by, my guess, some heroic female office lay worker in the Archdiocese).

The Archdiocese is also now known for the fact that, in Philadelphia, the Church has not lived up to its no-tolerance pledge. Like many mammoth institutions, the Church has found advancing molesters onward and, at times, upward, far simpler than confrontation. In some cases, the Church simply removed these men from the priesthood.

I am not in favor of the Church simply ridding…