Let me tell you about Tom Duffy, my pastor at Blessed Sacrament Church. Today, 50 years after his ordination, he continues to inspire his flock to feed the hungry, to clothe and shelter those in need. He visits the sick, buries the dead, comforts the lonely, welcomes the stranger, counsels the perplexed and still finds time to read almost everything. Father Duffy is both a good man and a good priest.

But because of the arrogance yes, the criminal indifference of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church he has served so well, Tom Duffy and too many good priests are now objects of suspicion. That is because the Church hierarchy, most conspicuously in the archdiocese of Boston, unforgivably betrayed young boys and young men whose protection, instruction and education were the Church’s mission by allowing predator clerics to physically, emotionally and spiritually violate them. Predictably, the collateral damage from the Church hierarchy’s indefensible policies has resulted in diminished public trust and respect for good priests, dozens of whom I personally know.

Too much of the leadership of the American Church was more concerned about damage control than it was with the horrible damage inflicted upon minors under its protection. A leading scholar of American Catholicism, history professor Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame, refuses to understate the grave consequences from the practice of reassigning rather than removing predator priests: “This threatens to erode the most important social capital any institution can have trustworthiness, integrity, the confidence to entrust one’s children to its care and protection.”

The Catholic Church, the nation’s largest nonpublic provider of schools and health care, was once cloaked in mystery. It is now shrouded in defensive secrecy. The Church has looked like an ecclesiastical Enron, with stonewalling its automatic response and preservation of the powerful even at the sacrifice and the suffering of the powerless and the unprivileged as the overriding imperative.

Through all the cultural wars of the last 40 years, one constant, one moral beacon, has been the Catholic Church’s commitment to the poor and to children. That promise was broken when, for 30 years, a Boston priest was shuffled from parish to parish to prey upon his target profile, the sons of single mothers, nearly all of whom were poor children.

Respected Catholic theologian Lawrence Cunningham believes the Church is paying the price for the Vatican’s almost exclusive emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy, which has led to the “promotion of mediocrities to positions of leadership.” The complicity of the Catholic clerical culture cannot be denied. If war is too important to leave to generals, then the health of the Church must be too important to leave to cardinals and archbishops.

According to Cunningham: “People are legitimately angry. They have been betrayed by this sustained assault on personal decency.” But historically, he adds, “no radical changes in the Catholic Church come from the top down. Change, when it does occur, comes from the bottom up.” It was, he reminds us, Saint Francis of Assisi who took the priesthood from the cloistered monastery to the town and people.

By way of information, the term pedophile priest is inaccurate. Pedophilia is the sexual disorder where an adult is attracted to prepubescent children. The majority of predator priests have ephebophilia which is characterized by the adult’s disordered attraction in this case not to prepubescent children, but to same-sex teen-agers who are in or through puberty. One other consideration: Thank goodness for the trial lawyers who dared to bring these cases to light and to challenge the corrupt status quo.

The American Catholic church needs a uniform national policy on the screening of seminarians. Emotional immaturity cannot be ignored simply because the applicant is doctrinally orthodox. The Church needs a policy of full transparency and accountability. The Church leadership must publicly apologize and beg for forgiveness for the pain and suffering its cruel indifference has inflicted upon innocent children whose lives and families have been profoundly damaged. The Church must recognize that its priests have committed criminal acts for which they are criminally liable and cooperate fully with civil authority.

And make no mistake about it: To recover and to rehabilitate itself, the Catholic Church needs idealism, imagination, energy and dedication which simply means the long-delayed ordination to the priesthood of women. Sorry, Cardinal Law.

Mark Shields is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.