Public worship declining due to bad clerical policy

For a few decades now, attendance at public worship masses, services and assemblies has been on a steady decline.  Fewer and fewer pilgrims are planted in the Catholic Church pews, and accordingly fewer and fewer dollars are being placed in the collection plate.

The clerical community is puzzled by this phenomenon, and is at a loss as to how to get those wayward sheep back into the flock. 

Of course they are puzzled and confused: the clergy and their policies are the reasons that less and less people attend public worship services.

Front and center, of course, is the issue of sexual abuses by untold multitudes of Catholic priests on young boys.  The Church has never really issued an official widespread apology, per se, to the victims of these evil priests, and no real reparations to the victims have been considered by the Church. 

The Catholic church has serious issues in recruiting and training priests, and has not come up with any viable process to eliminate pedophiles from its ranks.  None whatsoever.  One of the requirements of the priesthood is that the applicant must fore go all sexual activity, and for young men that is asking the world.  Who but the most dedicated, pious and righteous among us can keep that kind of oath?  Well, not enough, as reality has proven. 

For the Church to expect that the true believers should overlook this little matter, ignore the fact that there are still predatory clergy within its ranks is one of the major reasons that their Sunday masses are shrinking year by year.  In reality, the Church and its upper management has actually gone to great lengths to cover up this horrible activity, and to paper over any pain or suffering that its own policies have wrought on their flock. 

Nobody trusts them anymore.  Well, almost nobody.  In days gone by, Fathers, Priests and Vicars all held considerable esteem within the worshipping community, and their integrity was beyond question.  Now, all of that trust has gone up in smoke with this pedophile scandal, and the Church has essentially done nothing about it.

Now as I write this, the Catholic College of Cardinals is convening to select the next Pope.  The last Pope, Benedict XVI, did virtually nothing to reform the Church over this scandal.  Now there are two camps within the College: those who want to continue with business as usual, much as Pope Benedict did, and those who want to reform the policies in place that allowed these priests do do their evil within their sacred domain and trust.

Hopefully the second faction prevails, but with the Catholic Church, change comes very, VERY slowly.