stirring or stemming pedophile embers?

The Roman Catholic pope, Francis, landed in Ireland today in an apparent attempt to issue a satisfactory mea culpa to the once-rock-ribbed Catholic country that has seen membership dwindle in the face of pedophile-priestly abuse from the past. Will it work? Can the head priest undo what lesser priests saw fit to do? Can the curses of the blessed be dissolved?

“He is welcome as a guest but he is going to have to take action rather than repeat platitudes if we are really going to have any respect for the Church generally,” said Helen Carey, a visual arts curator, walking past Dublin Castle.

The Vatican has a long record of not doing much to stem the systemic flaws that nourished pedophiles in its midst. Its mea-culpas and legerdemain are now so familiar that constituents can almost repeat them without breathing hard ... ain't it awful, we apologize, we investigated, we're really good guys ... but the roots and branches remain untended. Priests took advantage of children, bishops covered their tracks, the church was preserved ... yadda, yadda, yadda. When the church says it is sorry, it's hard to know if it is sorry for its curses or for the reduction in income that attends upon such revelations.

Power and acknowledgment of that power is pretty important in spiritual circles: An email passed along today points out the Buddhist monk who grew enraged by a nine-year-old boy's antics and beat him ... so badly that the boy later died, it seems.

And, lest the spiritually-inclined get all the perks:

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Eleven former staffers at a prominent New Hampshire prep school have been accused of fondling, forced kissing and other sexual misconduct with students over several decades, according to two reports released on Friday.
The reports released by Phillips Exeter Academy also found that school administrators often failed to act on complaints of abuse and, in several cases, never recorded the complaints of wrongdoing in personnel files— allowing teachers to be hired elsewhere despite concerns about their behavior.

The law says "shouldn't" but human nature is more inquisitive and assertive than that.