Religion story of the decade is sexual predation

The decade's biggest religion story was an abandonment of the dictates of faith in clerical catholic/protestant sexual predation and globe-spanning efforts to conceal it without taking action to heal the victims or prevent further victimization.

Mark Silk wrote:

Unquestionably, the story of how American Catholic bishops, aided and abetted by civil authorities and mental health professionals, had systematically covered up the abuse of children by priests. This was big news locally in every Catholic diocese in the country. It became, because the USCCB was forced to confront it, a major national story. And it sparked rolling international coverage that, as this year's revelations in Ireland attest, continues to play out. Given the breadth and depth of the coverage, I'm prepared to make the case that there has never been as big a religion story in the history of modern journalism--and that given the parlous state of journalism today, we may never see anything on its scale again

Christa Brown covers that beat for Southern Baptists: the largest protestant denomination. She and Bruce Gorley agree that clerical sex abuse is the decade's top Baptist story.

Still unrolling is the Irish Catholic coverup of brutal abuse which dates at least to 1940. It involved transfer of a still undetermined number of pedophile and otherwise sexually predatory Irish prists to the United States when parishioner anger made it difficult to place them in Ireland.

Thus the pattern which is emerging, despite continuous efforts to obscure it, is of a worldwide Catholic coverup. Ongoing.

While the Southern Baptist Convention still pretends it has no responsibility for the horrors precipitated in its name.

While the little children suffer and some live to grow up, scarred by ministerial torture.