These sex scandals are a lot more widespread and pervasive than what is reported. The parish priest for the town that I went to high school in ended up leaving the Church because he said he couldn't sit on a church committee paying out victim after victim with a clear conscience. Some of the people were obviously lying and out for money, but in most cases the Church itself had received evidence that the accused had been guilty of wrongdoing.

It is not normal, natural or healthy for people to be celibate, particularly not in the modern world where the Church's hold on "the Truth" has been shattered and its own peculiar dogma no longer has common acceptance. I've known many good, honest priests who are genuinely spiritual people, but we have to face the fact that a lot of people join the priesthood because they feel that whatever sexual urges they are having are not "right" and the priesthood helps them actively suppress those urges. In an era when homosexuality no longer bears any stigma, the feeling that one's urges are not "right" can only come from activities that are truly wrong - paedophilia, necrophilia, zoophilia, rape, or sex combined with murder.

I think the Church should adopt the common practice (usage) that the Eastern Churches have held since before the schism - to receive a parish, a priest must be married. The only celibate clergy are monks and priests whose spouses have died (but only such celibate clergy are allowed to become bishops, metropolitans or patriarchs).