In case you missed it, the Pope has spent the last few days in Australia for the World Youth Day celebrations. By most accounts, the trip was not as successful as his trip to the United States. The abuse saga in Australia continued to shadow everything the Pope did during the trip, including secretly celebrating a private mass with hand picked victims prior to leaving Australia. In my opinion, this is precisely the problem with the Catholic Church’s handling of the abuse crisis (other than the fact that they’ve covered up the abuse for hundreds of years). The Church, in seeking to deal with the situation, continues to insist on dealing with it on their terms instead of the terms dictated by those victimized by the criminal sexual behavior of its priests. You can’t handpick victims to meet with if you are seeking healing and reconciliation for the masses of victims who’ve been abused by priests. It just doesn’t work that way. You can’t decide to meet with a select few who happen to be ok with the way you handled the abuse crisis if you’re trying to reform the church and deal with the massive public relations problem created by the bishops. It just doesn’t work that way, not in the real world anyway.