April 24, 2006 at 01:30 AM PRIESTS MOLESTED KIDS FOR CENTURIES
A former Vatican lawyer and two ex-Benedictine monks have written an explosive book that shows the Catholic child-molestation scandal goes back to the earliest days of the church.
"Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: he Catholic Church's 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse," was released last week and is the result of years of research by the three former Catholic bigwigs.
Together, authors Father Thomas P. Doyle, A.W.R. Sipe and Patrick J. Wall spent 70 years of their lives serving the Roman church.
They saw the molestation scandal begin to go public in the 1980, and eventually discovered the sex-abuse cover-up goes back to the earliest days of Christianity.
"The absolute core of this scandal is secrecy," Sipe said in a news release last week.
"It has provided an atmosphere where abuse could fester as a systemic infection. In the process, the lives of children, priests, bishops -- and indeed, the credibility of the Catholic Church itself -- have been shattered."