Calling all Catholics

Imagine if you will, that you have a son. Brought up in the Catholic faith, you decide to raise your child in your local church, with a priest whom you have known since your communion days.\nYou could be living anywhere. St. Louis, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, West Palm Beach,Fla., Boston -- any community is fair game. Let's just say for argument sake that your priest is Fr. John J. Geoghan, although it could be anyone -- at least 2,000 priests nationwide are fair game.\nAs your son grows up, you teach him to love the priest as his own dad. The years pass, and your son spends hours alone with the priest in his office as the priest "guides" him through the ways of the world.\nWhen your son is old enough to realize that something isn't right, he comes forward with gruesome tales about the priest touching him in places he didn't think were OK spots to be touched. You never had a talk with your son about molestation or sexual predators, so you go to the Cardinals of the church immediately with this information.\nYou lodge your complaints to the Diocesan superiors of the church and you are urged to keep quiet for the "good of the Church and the Faith." \nTime passes and you are convinced not to tell your fellow congregation members, the police or any other children. \nStill concerned, you contact the lawyers for the church, who stonewall any further investigation, upon the revelations from good Catholic doctors that the priest is now cured of his tendencies to grope young males. \nThe priest is pronounced cured, and all of the disgusting molestation that your child has experienced is pushed aside as a simple mistake, healable by the God that understands the priest's indiscretions. \nThe Bishop in Anytown, USA, orders the silent transfer of your priest to another parish where he can repeat his molestation again -- to another child in another family who is told that God would want them to keep silent.\nThe Church pays you a chunk of cash to keep quiet, purchasing your silence as if that erases the scars of sexual sin that your son has endured.\nYears later, when your son is older, still questioning why his Father would violate him in that way, the truth finally surfaces. It turns out your son wasn't the only one touched by Father Geoghan. Turns out there is more than one Fr. Geoghan.\nThe Catholic Church, it seems, has at least 2,000 confirmed cases of these molestations. Hundreds of stories begin to surface about the lying, the hiding and the betrayal of those supposedly deeply rooted in faith.\nBut it is too late. The hands of the Father have already hurt your son and those before and after him. Corruption finally surfaced, and the Catholic Church is still unwilling to take blame for the continual sexual assault of its leaders. Guarded by their superiors, these priests, many of whom face multiple charges, are still unwilling to take the fall for a ring of molestation and corruption that echoes that of a gang in the worst neighborhood in Compton.\n You as a mother must finally stand up and fight for your faith. It is no longer time to protect Catholicism. The longer these crimes occur in silence, the higher the chance future children will be victimized. If your son keeps his family rooted in Catholicism, you could have grandchildren who -- no matter where they live, or what priest becomes their "Father" -- go through the same misery.\nCatholics must band together and challenge their leaders to stop the silence and end this evil ring of molestation.