text: You're right -- trusting the hierarchy implicitly in this matter was a godawful mistake, believing implicitly that our local priests had nothing but good in mind for our children was a devastating mistake.  I think the increasing access to information over the last decades has made it less likely most of us would make that mistake again.  And it has opened eyes to many other forms of abuse and abusers.
  
  But we still have presumably lay people, even on this site, who seem to insist it either didn't happen, or has been blown out of proportion, or is a bunch of false allegations, or the hierarchy isn't responsible, or it's a conspiracy to attack the Church.  And that's after decades of revelations of the violence done to the laity, especially children, and the hierarchy's efforts to bury it.
  
  The hierarchy continues to act like we are simple children who just need to be told what to do and what to think, and everything would be fine -- for them.