The Catholic Church has long seemed to assume a holier-than-thou moral authority that has never quite lived up to the hype. For all the church's lecturing about following the straight and narrow path, putting faith above earthly temptations and adhering to the truth even when it hurts, its leadership has fallen woefully short of living up to minimal standards of morality. They are human and would be the first to admit their own fallibility — and the newest chapter in the church's child sexual-abuse scandal in Illinois makes abundantly clear how fallible they are.

Which should raise questions in the minds of many Catholics exactly where the church gets off counseling women on what they should or should not do with their own bodies if the men leading the church seem so incapable of controlling their own impulses, while others help cover up their scandals. Some might argue that the two issues aren't comparable, and that brothers in the faith using their authority to overpower children and sexually abuse them isn't the same as telling women they should not use contraceptives and that abortion is an unpardonable sin.

A 696-page investigative report by the Illinois attorney general found that the church woefully underreported the numbers of sexual predators in its ranks and that the actual number was four times higher than the 103 offenders the church identified in 2018. The group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests has long maintained that the church was hiding the extent of the abuse problem, and state Attorney General Kwame Raoul has effectively confirmed it.

Most of those predators have since died. The church's assistance in covering up their abuses helped ensure that they could live free of having to face justice for their crimes. For other offenders, the statute of limitations has expired.

Those victimized wound up being scarred psychologically for life. Helen Rainforth, from central Illinois, told National Public Radio that members of her church threatened to sue her when she first reported a case of abuse involving a relative in 1997. Raoul's report has at least given her a sense of validation.

In St. Louis, Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski is launching his "All Things New" total revamp of the archdiocese, which includes parish mergers prompted by falling church attendance. Lots of different factors no doubt have played into the declining numbers of congregants, but the church's abysmal conduct in the face of sexual abusers among its ranks no doubt has influenced the decline.

Americans have come to expect hypocrisy in politics, but people who claim the moral high ground shouldn't ask for tolerance, nor should it be granted.

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