Just a few points and opinions...
I was raised a Byzantine Rite (Eastern) Catholic. My father was Ukrainian and mother Slovak. Our priests have always been allowed to marry and you don't hear about pedophilia in the Eastern Rite. It may be there but nowhere near as much as in the Roman Rite.
There are two kinds of priests-- Order priests and diocesan priest. Order priest are usually monks first, such as Franciscans and Benedictines and take a vow of poverty and live a much simpler life. Diocesan priests are sent to the seminary and made priests by their diocese. They seem to be the main culprits in the scandal.
Here is how I think it all came about. "Little Jimmy" is raised in a strict Catholic family and realizes after puberty that he has "sick" thoughts. He likes little boys. He decides on a course of action that he believes will "kill two birds with one stone". He decides to become a priest. This will make his religious family proud of him and get rid of the question of why he doesn't like girls/women. He also believes that since he devoting his life to God, God will make him stop having these perverted thoughts.
The problem is, he's in the seminary and the thoughts don't stop. He discusses it with his fellow friend seminarians and finds that a sizable minority of them also think the same way. They form a pact to protect each other as they rise through the ranks. They are a large enough group that even the individual "straight" priests are too afraid to confront them. Soon, some are bishops and cardinals and nobody messes with them.
Even the dioceses that have "named names" haven't released any from the past 10-15 years, the ones whose statute of limitations hasn't run out yet. They're still protecting each other.
That's why I've become an "independent religious person". I still act like a moral person but don't really feel the need to belong to any organized religion.
