Dear God

Absolution is the formal remission of sin, imparted by a priest. It also can explain why pedophilic priests can continue on after they've been caught molesting and raping children:

The Vatican tried to stop church leaders here from defrocking a particularly dangerous pedophile priest and relented only after he raped a boy in a restroom at a pub, according to an investigation released Friday.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said he fully accepted the findings of the latest chapter in Ireland’s investigation into child abuse by priests in Dublin who were shielded from the law by Catholic leaders.

Archbishop Martin called the priest, Tony Walsh, an “extremely devious man” who should never have been ordained.

A state-ordered investigation into cover-ups by the Dublin Archdiocese reported last year that church officials had shielded scores of priests from criminal investigation over several decades and did not report any crimes to the police until the mid-1990s.

We know that avoiding punishment (in this case, in the form of legal penalties, fines, and ostracization) is enough of a motivating factor for the Catholic clergy to cover up these horrible acts. There might be something wrong, however, with the idea that admission of sin to a priest with a subsequent forgiveness of that sin makes everything better...also that the placement of that Church doctrine over/above the mundane laws of governments is a Church practice that needs to be re-thought.

I'm not holding my breath for that, as the Catholic church does not adapt itself to change well.