text: The issue first was rumored in the eighties, got sparse but regular media coverage in the nineties, broke wide open in Boston in 2002 and has continued weekly trail of world wide involvement in the media up to  today.  Now this open letter by someone who has lived with the issue for almost its entire existence.  It is  tragic that Cardinal O'Malley has a letter in the same issue of NCR to say that PF still is focused on the issue of accountability of bishops. One cannot look at 40 years of scandal, recrimination, excuses, bankruptcy, lawyering up and a commission that in years of existence has zero results except the resignation of members as anything other than  a slow dance allow the guilty to retire and die without more publicity and legal expense for the Church.  Reminds me of the years it took to negotiate the shape of the table to end the Vietnam war.