How many times does the civilized world have to be presented with overwhelming evidence that pedophiles wearing the collar of the priesthood are no different than lay sickos who prey on young boys, and should be locked up (or better yet, drawn and quartered)?

Accusing the Church of condoning such despicable acts is just as absurd as accusing the gov't of condoning adultery in the House and Senate, or the Boy Scouts of America condoning the acts of a few of its leaders.
Such acts, just as murder, robbery and other crimes, are commited by individuals, not but institutions.
We should shut down the gov't for allowing adultery and arrest the President!
We should shut down all the other faiths that have their preachers who prey on children, or are unfaithful to their spouse and force them to pay restitution in the millions of dollars to their victims.

It's hard to take the article and the post of "senior editor" seriously when the very first sentence contains such a basic grammatical error.

Sam Harris is far from objective in this matter. From the opening sentence, I laughed out loud. The Catholic Church does NOT demonize sex; only poor journalists who lack the credibility to back up their claims with actual Vatican documentation believe so. Read up on John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" if you disagree, and be honest. Read up on how the Church has quoted "Song of Solomon" throughout the ages. Read up on how masterful church-sanctioned artworks from Michealangelo to Caravaggio have employed artful uses of nudity to demonstrate God's love for mankind is analagous to a Groom to His Bride. As for the Church's past actions towards the sexual abuses of its priests: why are you not current? This past year only _six_ cases (out of tens of thousands of priests) occurred, and each and every one of those priests were defrocked. Granted, one abuse is far too many, and there are now measures to help the victims in place. But it's statistical ratio is far, far less than that of other denominations/religions, and of public school teachers, dentists, and... journalists. You would be doing bloggers a great service if you seriously look at this objectively and not jump in on agenda-based journalism.

Im so sad that I will never see an end to religion.

The first quote says that the church attracted sexual deviants to the church. I think it should also be noted that the church helped to "create" those sexual deviants by their demonizing of human sexuality. Suppressed sexuality is going to come out in all kinds of strange configurations. In turn these sexual deviants turn to the priesthood believing it will some how "fix" them. The same thing happened to the military and the boy scouts in years past. The thought was that these "manly" institutions would make a man out of you.

I agree the scandals have caused grave injury deserving of condemnation and extensive reparation. In no way do I wish to would belittle this reality. At the same time though, I would like to note that what concerns me about Harris' statements (and the recent condemnations of the Catholic Church) is that they have done very little, if anything at all, to give the Catholic Church credit for the great lengths it has gone, particularly in recent years, to prevent sexual scandal from happening further. At virtually any Catholic institution in the U.S., you will find new rules and strict regulations in place that are in effect, detering "pederasts, pedophiles, and sexual sadists," not attracting them as Mr. Harris claims.

The other concern I have is that the claims made by Harris, who is considered by many to be a well-informed intellectual, seem to be ignorant of what Catholic teaching actually states. I would question how much Harris has actually studied the church's teachings on contraception and sexuality elucidated in official documents such as "Humane Vitae" or philosophical works endorsed by the church such as "Love and Responsibility." Before publicly condemning the church on it's teachings, it seems it would be only fair to actually look into what those teachings actually say.

Having studied those teachings myself, I can affirm that they in no way, shape, or form are designed to condemn "generations of decent people to shame and hypocrisy," but rather are intended to do quite the opposite. I will not explain the reasons here second-hand, but instead would recommend a first-hand reading of the teachings themselves. Afterall, there are always two-sides to a story. I think the least everyone can do is give the Catholic Church a chance to explain their own.

The whole institution of organized religion is so f'd up in my opinion. Of course it offers many people lots of things like community, friendship, a source of hope and a way to stay happy by being able to blame unfortunate things on "god's will". But I cannot understand how any educated person can look at religion and believe in something merely because others before them believed it and it is in a book that has been around for 2000 years. Basically their god is someone who they ask wishes from when they pray and live as slaves while they are alive in fear they will upset their all knowing genie in the sky and get sent to hell. In my opinion if there is a god and he really loves us all he would want us to do what makes us happy and be good people and do good things. Not make us disregard our own human nature. Why give us free will if we cannot use it?

True tragedy. The fact that people still propagate iron-age myths is baffling. The fact that people tacitly condone cruelty, through inaction and silence, is horrifying.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
-Voltaire