Daniel Henninger, in a (subscription-only) Wall Street Journal article about Michael Jackson, made a surprising comment: He said, "If Michael walks, I'll wonder if any of the many convicted Catholic priests similarly charged were in fact innocent but found guilty because they couldn't push back against the state's relentless steamroller."
Wow. What a refreshing comment to hear from the media: The possibility that some innocent priests got caught up in the net along with the true pedophiles.
I'm not going to deny that there were true pedophiles that deserved to be punished, but the whole sex abuse thing turned, I think, into something like a witch hunt. I knew this when people started opposing policies whose intent were to protect the rights of accused priests. I would certainly not be surprised if a small number of innocent priests got nailed, and I am gratified that a member of the media would acknowledge this.
