Hanging Head Down on Downing Street

In the end, it's the cover up that gets you. If the Watergate scandal should have taught us anything, it's the fact that what brings people, institutions or governments down is not so much the crime, but the cover up.

This is a lesson that the Catholic Church is learning the hard way. As bad as the sex abuse of children is -- much worse than a burglary -- what has gotten the Church in deep trouble is its cover up, by either doing nothing about it or doing everything to hide it.

We are now finding out that the British government also did not learn from what happened to their cousins from "across the pond." In what seems like an epidemic of pedophilia through several decades, U.K officials either ignored the problem, including the one in government circles, or, much worse, covered it up, going so far as to hide or destroy documents about it.

The Pope has begged for forgiveness for what the Church has done. Now that Thatcher is dead -- much of this occurred during her watch -- who will ask for forgiveness on Downing Street?

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